Subject: Re: application architecture for UI (Ex: Re: Is LISP dying?) From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/07/25 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3141912853026521@naggum.no> * Andrew Cooke <andrew@andrewcooke.free-online.co.uk> | 4. Open agression, name calling, and a ghetto-like mentality that seems | to assume that all non-Lisp users are idiots is not just depressing, but | could actively discourage someone from using software that may, in fact, | be useful (not all these features are in your posts, but they have all | been appeared in this thread). I've spent all week trying to catch up with news after a couple week's vacation, but when I see how hostile Andrew Cooke is to participants in this newsgroup (how is accusing people of "ghetto-like mentality" going to help things?), I start to wonder whether he actually prefers lingering and suppressed aggression, scheming, and backstabbing to open aggression. I prefer people who speak their mind instead of waiting for a long time to make a really big issue out of individual issues that normal people would have a normal reaction to that let others know they were annoyed, but those who have to suppress their emotions would have to accumulate every time they suppressed them. you see, Andrew, those who speak their mind immediately DON'T accumulate their anger, so when you see open aggression, it is not because someone who has suppressed his anger for years got mad, it's a genuinely useful way to AVOID ever getting mad in the face of a lot of stupidity and annoyances in open fora. in a suppressed-emotion world, you're supposed to grin and bear it, which means that the thresholds are so high that only if one did in fact view non-Lisp users as idiots would the behavior you don't understand become applicable, but this is not so. instead of reacting severely only to major crimes, people say "hey! you!" at every contact with people who do the wrong thing. you interpret that as people being loudmouths and rude and whatnot, without understanding that anyone could be so culturally challenged (in your view) as to care about these small things. suppression of emotion and the "grin and bear it" mentality don't scale very well, and people tend to get a lot more upset with the scheming, backstabbing bastards whose anger has lingered for so long they have been completely blinded by it and can no longer see anything but that which annoys them -- in brief, they actually do get depressed by it all. you see, Andrew, that's just what happens to people who _don't_ speak their mind in time. so, what you see is a healthy discourse among people who aren't so uptight they fear that someone might see they are hurt or annoyed in public. being so uptight that such fear rules one's life probably works in very small communities where everybody thinks and acts this way, but it fails miserably in large communities, and especially open communities, such as the Internet. | 5. If you care about the language and the GUI, why not try and convert | people rather than make enemies? people don't make enemies, the react to actions they don't like. people who make enemies because of their interaction in a newsgroup are mentally disturbed and should seek counseling. those who look at others as if that is what they do are probably even more in need of counseling because they are obviously unable to cope with anything but suppressed emotions. and let's talk about Lisp, not eachother, OK? people are most intersting to people who keep accumulating annoyances do until they have to burst, but people you don't intend to relate to are not interesting, even though their actions and ideas might be worthy of notice, so unplug and relax, Andrew. you'll feel better and we won't have to listen to your whining every time your buffers run full. #:Erik -- suppose we blasted all politicians into space. would the SETI project find even one of them?