Subject: Re: source access vs dynamism From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/09/09 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3145853034451311@naggum.no> * William Tanksley | But you yourself state that a few people are enough. look again. "at first" are the operative words, here. if you stay put at "a few people", it is obviously not sufficient to make a difference. | The conclusion you're working towards here is that the people who say | Lisp is dying are deluded. This is a good conclusion, but doesn't | address your topic sentence: that there must be positive momentum in | order for dynamic software to beat static software. sigh. my topic sentence is that people choose the path of least immediate resistance, and therefore will think that source access to static software is an improvement in their needs. in the long term, it isn't, because what they _need_ is dynamic behavior in their software, and they can't get that in the long run by tweaking some source. they think they can, because in the short term, they can make fixes and get the behavior they want, but the more of these there are, the harder it gets to upgrade. | I posit that you can't justify your topic, because your own logical | premises deny it. I think your logical premises deny my conclusion, and that's something entirely different. | Open Source ensures the availablility of software, so we who find dynamic | software to be superior should be making it Open Source whenever possible. this is not supported by either evidence or any logical premises I know about. how did you arrive at the conclusion that open source ensures _availablility_ of software? | Commercial funding helps advertisement, so we should also be frequenting | companies which support dynamic software (especially open sourced | versions thereof). I have been arguing for the view the source access is not necessary, and can indeed be harmful, and now you want to support people predicated on doing needless, harmful things to what people really need. I'm not sure, but it doesn't seem that you have understood one iota of what I written. | Don't forget -- this language has the long view. I've never seen its | like before. If we do our job by keeping it alive and available, and if | your premises are correct, Lisp will in time win. I'm arguing that if people get too much source access, dynamic software will not win, because they will be "satisfied" with the static software. | In the meantime, we get to write -- but sadly, seldom use -- dynamic | software. Odds are we'll still be alive when the superior alternative | becomes the commonly used alternative, so the wait will not be forever. nothing just _happens_, William. everything worth doing takes a lot of effort. my point about changing the habits of a few AT FIRST, means that we have to change the habits of a few AT A TIME. the road to defeat is to accept to wait for somebody else to do something. but enough of this, I'm tired of repeating myself. #:Erik -- it's election time in Norway. explains everything, doesn't it?