Newsgroups: comp.lang.beta,comp.lang.lisp From: cyber_surfer@wildcard.demon.co.uk (Cyber Surfer) Path: news.daimi.aau.dk!news.uni-c.dk!sunic!trane.uninett.no!eunet.no!nuug!EU.net!howland.reston.ans.net!news.sprintlink.net!demon!wildcard.demon.co.uk!cyber_surfer Subject: Re: Comparison: Beta - Lisp References: <34pfea$6ee@belfort.daimi.aau.dk> <354q47$60i@belfort.daimi.aau.dk> Organization: The Wildcard Killer Butterfly Breeding Ground Reply-To: cyber_surfer@wildcard.demon.co.uk X-Newsreader: Demon Internet Simple News v1.27 Lines: 67 Date: Wed, 21 Sep 1994 14:01:06 +0000 Message-ID: <780156066snz@wildcard.demon.co.uk> Sender: usenet@demon.co.uk Xref: news.daimi.aau.dk comp.lang.beta:102 comp.lang.lisp:13397 In article jeff@aiai.ed.ac.uk "Jeff Dalton" writes: > I hope we don't add a misleading "Lisp advocate" stereotype > to the already misleading "Lisp" stereotype. Is that a reference to the thread about a newsgroup for Lisp advocacy? I'm not sure, but this looks like you've misunderstood the issue, which was about the need, or not, for a comp.lang.lisp.advocacy newsgroup, and not the nature and/or worth of Lisp advocacy, which is another matter. My point was merely that at the moment, there's no choice, except to add such advocacy threads to a killfile, which is not ideal. I hope I've misunderstood your comment, in which case I apologise. However, I'm not aware of any stereotype being the problem. Perhaps you're refering to some other thread, perhaps in another newsgroup, but I don't know. So I'll just add that _my_ thread (the one I started) was about the location of such advocacy threads, bot about their worth. I'd like to have a choice about what I read, which is a purely personal thing. It just happens that we see these threads in comp.lang.lisp, and I'm not aware of a Lisp newsgroup that might cover the same subjects but without the advocacy threads. If you can suggest one, then I'll happily leave comp.lang.lisp and go and read it. Meanwhile, I've been enjoying this particular thread, as I felt it had some interesting things to say about implementation and design of languages. I hadn't thought of it in the same way as "C vs Lisp" threads. Should I? As I said above, if I've misunderstood your comment, then I'm sorry. I wish well with your Lisp advocacy, whether I read it or not. If I've ever suggested or implied that you _shouldn't_ advocate Lisp, then I'm sorry for that, too. It could only have been because of an misunderstanding. I've seen some extreme advocacy of Pascal vs C, and itwas ugly. That rather colours my feelings! I didn't mean to imply that you were included in that group of advocates, as I've always found your posts worth reading. The comp.lang.visual newsgroup is in need of another kind of advocacy, simply because so many users of VB and VC++ have yet to discover the wider world of "visual" programming that Microsoft have yet to support. That goes way beyond "X vs Y" debates, and into the power of marketing over the power (or lack of it) of other media, such as UseNet. You can read the comp.lang.visual FAQ for the details, if you want to know more about that problem. It'll explain why some people believe that c.l.v should become a moderated newsgroup. I'm glad that Lisp hasn't reached that point, and I hope that it never will. After all, the name Lisp still refers to Lisp, and not a Microsoft product that looks nothing like Lisp. Ouch. Well, ok. That's my c.l.v advocacy over with for today. ;-) > (I have seen Lisp code that looked like FORTRAN, BTW. Imagine > lots of PROGs and GOs. But not for many years.) Yeah, me too. I used to write Basic code like that. Then I switched to Forth, and never used an exlicit GOTO again. Now I just write compilers and macros that can do it for me. ;-) Martin Rodgers -- Future generations are relying on us It's a world we've made - Incubus We're living on a knife edge, looking for the ground -- Hawkwind