Subject: Re: Why learn Lisp From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 26 Aug 2002 05:28:36 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.scheme Message-ID: <3239328516484763@naggum.no> * Charlton Wilbur | And even then, designing a new language does not necessarily mean rejecting | all that has gone before. After you know what has gone before, you can be more intelligently creative than when you start out from scratch. | Did Bertrand Meyer discard what he had learned from other languages when he | designed Eiffel? Did Bjarne Stroustrup discard what he had learned from | other languages when he started down the path that led to C++? Did | Kernighan, Ritchie, and Thompson discard what they had learned when they | created C? Of course not. Of course not. Were they 18-year-old whining loners who craved attention for their inventions created in a vacuum? Of course not. Do you know anything worth beans to anyone else when you are 18? Of course not. | Still, it's hardly surprising that comp.lang.lisp doesn't care. So far, the willingness to listen does not even extend to Paul Graham's Arc. Novices with a desire to reinvent the world before they know what it is like should take notice of this. Improving on Common Lisp is /very/ hard. And most of the "improvements" on Scheme are neither improvements nor Scheme. -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.