Subject: Re: Java is really convenient. Re: Sun thinks about switching Java to S-expression syntax: Lava
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1999/02/17
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3128224612301670@naggum.no>

* cbarry@2xtreme.net (Christopher R. Barry)
| Can you develop GUIs with [Allegro CL 5.0 Lite]?

  AFAIK, that was the whole idea, but since I don't use GUIs, I'm not
  entirely sure what it can do.  but why not try to read what Franz Inc
  writes about this and ask them directly?  on the Net, people argue about
  whether year 2000 is a leap year or not, so it's not as if you can rely
  on the answers you get.

| Hmm... sigh.  Another assumption on my part.  I'll have to get around to
| reading that license.  Sometime.

  before your next gripe about it would be a good value of "sometime".

| They've got to get us using their products while we're young and still in
| school so we know to tell our managers that we want to use CL for a
| project once we're hired instead of thinking only in terms of how to
| implement a solution using C++, Perl or Java.

  does the medical profession provide kids with scalpels and syringes while
  still in school so they get used to using them by the time some of them
  will enter medical school?  if not, why not?

  seriously, I wonder where this wacky idea of yours comes from.  lots of
  people think that you have to accomodate kids, novices, and idiots in
  order to _succeed_.  that isn't quite true -- you need to do that to make
  a mass market with millions of users.  this always has enormous costs in
  what you have to do to attract them.  e.g., you think in terms of
  "unnecessary inconveniences" instead of understanding that programming is
  all about removing inconveniences that arise in your particular
  application, and you want people to give you things instead of creating
  them.  that's lazy in the wrong way.

| All the other people in my Java class have pretty much only seen C, VB,
| C++ or whatever and they're probably liking Java a lot more than even I
| am.... They'll never learn to think Lisp.

  oh, they will, in time.  people come to Lisp for reasons of their own.
  you can't push Lisp on people -- you can't push good taste on people.

#:Erik