🚀 go-pugleaf

stan shebs starts off saying:

>I don't why I'm bothering to respond to this uninformed flame, but I've got

You should talk about uninformed....

>Fortranners and Pascallers and Cers don't worry about this sort of thing,
>because they just write sort routines and membership tests over and over
>and over again, and wonder why they have to work 10 times as hard to get
>their programs as sophisticated as the same ones in Lisp.

Obviously, you know much about Common Lisp, and nothing about C (and probably
Fortan or Pascal, but since I haven't used the languages in many years, I won't
comment about them). Either that, or you are a pretty poor C programmer.
There are reasons why people have C libraries, after all. I have programmed
both in C and in Lisp (mostly Franz, but lately mostly Common-lisp). They both
have advantages and disadvantages, and one of the things I liked about Franz
was the ability to link C routines in with the Lisp code. But in my years of
programming in C, I have not duplicated code. And there are definitely things
I can do much faster in C than in Lisp, and visa-versa. Depending on the
goal, one can work ten times as hard to reach a level of sophistication
achieved in C in Lisp, or achieved in Lisp in C. My points are these: neither
language is more virtuous than the other (there are some really awful things
about Lisp, but on the other hand, there are some things I'd rather not even
consider doing in C rather than Lisp and the other way around), and second,
a good C programmer does not in fact rewrite code s/he's already written. There
is nothing in either these languages that I am aware of that makes one better
than the other on this score. I suggest you learn to programme in C before
making such remarks.

>I think those who flame about language designs should be forced to
>design, implement, and distribute their own language, then listen
>while know-nothing second-guessers complain about things they
>don't understand to begin with...

I think those who flame about a language they evidently know little or nothing
about should consider learning it first.

By the way, Steele's book is terrible. I mean, even as a reference. The UPM
is easier to read. It assumes in some sections that one is reading it like
a book (as opposed to a reference). I think that at least he could have
put the entries in each chapter in alphabetical order. I like the Franz
documentation better. And there are problems with Common-lisp. It is hardly
perfection. The thing that bothers me the most is the limitations of
parameter passing. I forget exactly what the problem was...I think I wanted
to have &optional parameters followed by &key, but I'd had to have a &rest
between them. Most annoying. Oh well. I was told the reason for this, but
as I recall, it didn't seem like a very good reason (and I wasn't alone
in my opinion).



					-- Chris Young.
arpa: cycy@cmu-ri-isl1
uucp: {...![arpa/uucp gateway (eg. ucbvax)]}!cycy@cmu-ri-isl1

"We had it tough... I had to get up at 9 o'clock at night, half an hour
before I went to bed, eat a lump of dry poison, work 29 hours down mill,
and when we came home our Dad would kill us, and dance about on our grave 
singing haleleuia..."

					-- Monty Python