Subject: Re: Why I didn't chose LISP
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Tue, 28 May 2002 13:14:42 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3231580471425410@naggum.net>

  PLEASE do not mail me copies of posted articles!  The header I include in
  all posted articles should be obeyed by reasonably modern news readers,
  and it goes like this:

Mail-Copies-To: never

  If you feel an urge to mail me a copy of a posted article, at least have
  the decency to mark it as such so I can ignore it completely, or I will
  believe it is a personal comment requiring personal attention.  If you
  have no concept of the difference between public and private, please do
  not make it my problem, too.  I post this because I am annoyed with the
  many people who keep mailing me copies of posted articles, and although
  it helps to write each one in turn, the bigger problem is not solved that
  way.  Please stop this practice!  That does not mean I do not appreciate
  private communication that is just that, but I have to check to see if
  the same article is posted some time after I received it as mail unless
  it explicitly says it is personal, and that is wasteful, annoying and
  delaying.  It is doubly annoying when I mail gets lost because I believe
  it could have been posted, and it falls through the cracks.  So PLEASE do
  not mail me copies of posted articles unless you (or your news program)
  clearly marks them as such.  Is this acceptable?  If not, do not reply to
  my messages -- you only pollute my mailbox in worse ways than spam.  OK?

* Barry Watson
| Sometimes the interpreter is the de facto semantics and hence the
| specification, e.g. the "discovery" that Lisp had dynamic scope. 
:
| Like lisp in the early 1960s?

  You seem to be unaware of the effects of the passage of time.  How can I
  help you understand that things and relationships change and evolve and
  that what was once true may no longer be, and that what is now true, may
  not always have been?  It is essentially a deeply philosophical question,
  yet some people seem unable to comprehend the concept of "time", hence
  have no concept of "context", either, and believe that every statement
  is expected to be universally true, both in time and space.  I generally
  find communication with such people to be inherently impossible, since
  they will not allow for either learning or correction.

  So, of course, Lisp was once no more than a tool.  Over time, it evolved
  into a _language_ when the specification became more important than the
  documentation of the only implementation and independent implementations
  of the language from the _specification_ became possible, not just new
  implementations that emulated the first or another implementation.  C++
  was long Bjarne's favorite perverse toy, then got standardized into a
  perverse language, but I very much doubt that anyone has actually tried
  to implement C++ solely from the specification.
-- 
  In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none.
  In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.

  70 percent of American adults do not understand the scientific process.