Subject: Re: Which one, Lisp or Scheme?
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1997/02/01
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.scheme
Message-ID: <3063752453257689@naggum.no>


* Alaric B. Williams
| So there should be a 'first-that' or something that takes a lambda
| parameter.  An oversight in the standard procedure library isn't much of
| a problem IMHO... things can be added to Scheme, but nothing can be
| removed from CL...

sigh.  who can choose a language with such proponents, and such arguments
in its favor?  it's legitimate for any Scheme user to point out flaws in
Common Lisp like they could win an olympic medal for it, but if you point
out a design problem with Scheme the same people will readily pardon any
and all flaws in Scheme as "oversights" or even worse trivializations.

it is impossible to argue with people who have detached their emotional
involvement in a language (which any language worth using will inspire in
its users) from rational appreciation of its role, relevance, and value.

Scheme is the only language I have ever seen where people will actually
argue in _favor_ of its flaws, explicitly or implicitly by some stupid
non-argument about some other language.  once upon a time, I used to think
that a language (SGML) had such wondrous potential that I would ignore all
present flaws and practical problems.  I gradually came to understand that
that potential would never be realized, precisely because nobody cared to
fix the present flaws and practical problems -- those who saw the potential
ignored them and talked about how SGML changed the idea of information and
all that fine management-level nonsense, and those who had to deal with
them just found ways to live with them, even arguing against changes!

take a look at Common Lisp's `member' some day.  the `first-that' that you
seem to think of is called `member-if' in Common Lisp.  it is different
from a `member' with a :test argument.  also note the :key argument.
(and _please_ note that :test-not and `member-if-not' are deprecated.)

#\Erik
-- 
1,3,7-trimethylxanthine -- a basic ingredient in quality software.