Re: Cool and Useful LISP for the .emacs file

[Alan Mackenzie]

Burton Samograd <kruhft@hotmail.com> wrote on Mon, 10 Nov 2003 21:00:03
GMT:
> Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> writes:

>> I still haven't heard from a Lisp hacker who found it difficult to
>> switch to C or Java (painful, yes of course, but not difficult, except
>> maybe for manual memory management), so I'd say that Lisp's rut is
>> rather shallow indeed.

> From my experience, switching to lisp is a bit more work than the other
> way around, due to the type of people that helped shape lisp in the
> first place.  C and UNIX were developed around the "worse is better"
> type philosophy, where LISPy systems were more focused on the
> consistent and perfect side.

All due respect, and everything, but the above is incoherent nonsense.
"Worse is better"?  What's that supposed to mean?  "..due to the type of
people that helped shape lisp"?  That seems disparaging.  What have
personalities got to do with the difficulties of learning a new
programing language?

[ .... ]

> For the ones that want to attack the LISP learning curve there are
> plenty of resources available from the existing LISP community, but
> don't expect much help if you dive in and start telling them their
> language should be changed because you "don't get it".  LISP is great
> and LISP is fun, but it's still a programming language, but much more
> akin to a sketchbook than a paintroller.

A "pain troller".  What a strange concept!  Such posters are, thankfully,
not common on gnu.emacs.help, but they are regretfully abundant elsewhere
on Usenet.  :-(

> -- 
> burton samograd
> http://kruhftwerk.dyndns.org

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Munich, Germany)
Email: aacm@muuc.dee; to decode, wherever there is a repeated letter
(like "aa"), remove half of them (leaving, say, "a").