Subject: Re: Comp.lang.lisp/scheme) From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Sat, 16 Mar 2002 07:33:50 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3225252842027647@naggum.net> * Bruce Lewis <brlspam@yahoo.com> | All joking aside, it's simply an indication that some people feel | strongly that it's important to emphasize common ground between the two | communities, while others feel strongly that it's important to establish | distance between the communities. Still others go back and forth between | those first two positions depending on what they're trying to accomplish. That does not rhyme with any of the Scheme vs Common Lisp discussions I have ever seen _anywhere_. What kinds of communities have you observed and now think you see again? Scheme people come here with a "we're right and you're wrong" attitude. There is certainly no "common ground" they seek, probabl because Common Lisp _is_ the very definition of common ground in the Lisp community, and Scheme is not it. What most Common Lispers do in return is ask these people to consider the possibility that more than one thing can be right -- but still not inviting them into the fold until they do accept that Common Lisp got something right. There is no common ground between people who think the other party cannot be right and people who want to be respected for their choices. The ability to listen appears to be unusually concentrated on the Common Lisp side, while the Scheme side is unusually strong on talking, and when they are asked to please listen before they talk, they get hostile. That is why we have the same goddamn discussions over and over and over with the Scheme freaks, who either completely fail to learn, as a community, or who _breed_ people of such arrogance that they repeat this obnoxious attitude problem and think they have finally figured out this Lisp thing, and then Common Lisp stands there in the way and says "Bzzzt! Wrong!". Maybe that offends them or something, but what it seems the Scheme freaks are trying to do is to say "We're the Lisp, and you're not!". That is neither a desire for a common ground nor a desire to distance the two, it is a hostile takeover attempt. /// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.