Subject: Re: special forms.
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:30:34 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3204379828944859@naggum.net>

* Nils Goesche <cartan@cartan.de>
> True; in a language with lazy evaluation however, this argument wouldn't
> hold, would it?  Maybe that's why the functional fanatics are so fond of
> lazy evaluation.

  That depends on just how lazy you are, of course.  However, I must admit
  to not appreciating lazy evaluation -- it is more work for everybody for
  nothing better than the sake of some misguided notion of purity.  Lazy it
  is not.  The problem with computer science is that people who otherwise
  would work on anti-gravity, cold fusion, telepathy, remote viewing, UFO
  propulsion, etc, look like normal guys because there is no hard and fast
  reality to run into if you have the wrong ideas.  Just pour 500 million
  dollars' worth of marketing into the hitherto real world, and voila!, the
  new reality is that a lot of people will actually _want_ that XP thing.
  Or type theory, functional or object-oriented programming, pathologically
  eclectic rubbish listers, or other junkware or fancy new wrapping for far
  less than brilliant ideas, which if similar brilliance were introduced
  into medicine would have killed people.  Most of the tremendous progress
  in hardware is due to the fact that you get _serious_ feedback if you are
  wrong about the physics involved.  Most of the lack of software progress
  is due to the lack of feedback when you do something stupid.  Computers
  should be smart enough to tell stupid people to go away.  Hey, maybe the
  two million votes that were turned down in the Bush vs Gore "election"
  were really computers taking charge of the very sorry situation and were
  trying to tell people that either half-popular choice was simply _wrong_,
  but because they did not evolve fast enough, they could not turn down all
  of the stupid votes in time?  Maybe there is yet hope for mankind if
  computers could keep the stupidity from multiplying out of control.  But
  I sort of digress.
  
#:Erik
-- 
  Travel is a meat thing.