Subject: Re: LISP format (happy to read)
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 16:57:24 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3215523442017539@naggum.net>

* Cad Bilbao
| Is it very important???? I'd prefer my annotation, because
| I come from Java and C++...

  Yes, it is just as important as not ending Java/C++ bodies with }}}}}.
  You are writing in Common Lisp, now.  If you continue to write in Java or
  C++, may I suggest that you get a compiler that agrees with that choice?

  I cannot _fathom_ what people are thinking when they start to use a new
  programming language but are so stuck in their old programming language
  that they have stopped listening to their surroundings and have stopped
  taking in new information very relevant to their ability to learn the new
  language.  I do not understand why people think their past conclusions
  and observations are _fundamentally_ more important than their future
  conclusions and observations, either.  And why does this happen so often
  to programmers in explicitly and statically typed languages?  Is it
  because they are used to, indeed _need_ to, put a seal on all the new
  information that keeps coming in, in order not to keep changing the code
  and the class hierarchies and whatnot, because no matter when you design
  these things, it is overspecified and premature?  This may be such an
  ingrained psychological factor that it may not even be conscious, but
  then it is even more annoying.  It may be one of the hardest thing to
  unlearn from an old language, because it is such an unspoken thing that
  it is mainly learned from fear and frustration, but even if that is the
  case, it _should_ dawn on people that these feelings are out of place in
  a better language.  Instead, Common Lisp programmers have to deal with
  the very annoying habit of immigrants from other programming languages to
  want to pretend they are still living in their old cultures.  Sigh.

///
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