While I wouldn't normally recommend reading a Slashdot forum, there're
some wonderful counter-FUD responses to the Lisp FUD spread by
clueless C++ bozos (in this case, it's a clueless gameswriter). And
I'm not necessarily refering to the "He dissed Lisp!" thread. Even in
the GameSpy forum there are counterviews.
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/01/25/150238.shtml
http://phorum.gamespy.com/index.php?num=3
The article itself is here: "Tim Sweeney of Epic Games:
A Critical Look at Programming Languages":
http://www.gamespy.com/articles/devweek_b.shtm
Here's a quote from the intro:
You will also notice an
entire category of languages missing, the
functional languages represented by Lisp,
Haskell, and Miranda; they are interesting
research topics, but we're sticking to
languages with ample applicability to shipping
applications and games. This article is about
practice, not theory.
Epic ignorance, perhaps.
--
Email address intentionally munged | You can never browse enough
"Ahh, well. Back to reality." -- Mark Radcliffe
From: Friedrich Dominicus
Subject: Re: More anti-Lisp FUD dies, on Slashdot
Date:
Message-ID: <388EC035.65007C57@inka.de>
>
> Here's a quote from the intro:
>
> You will also notice an
> entire category of languages missing, the
> functional languages represented by Lisp,
> Haskell, and Miranda; they are interesting
> research topics, but we're sticking to
> languages with ample applicability to shipping
> applications and games. This article is about
> practice, not theory.
>
> Epic ignorance, perhaps.
you should read the whole article and not just one sentence. You'll see
that he recommends thinking about using this sort of language.
Regards
Friedrich
Voice in the desert: Quiet, isn't it, Friedrich Dominicus?
> you should read the whole article and not just one sentence. You'll see
> that he recommends thinking about using this sort of language.
Oh, I _did_. He describes languages which are already features of the
"sort of language" that he dismissed in the first part of his article.
Why would he make such a distinction at the beginning if he thinks
these are the very "future lanaguages" that he later talks about?
"And, it remains the unfortunate truth that there are more
professional Cobol programmers than C programmers, more C++
programmers than Java programmers, and for many years there will be
more Java programmers than there are followers of the successor
language."
Poorly phrased, I think. The successors - plural - are already here.
If he's refering to _their_ successors then his article is misleading.
If he wrote his article for programmers who little more than C++, then
it could be an example stealth marketing that has backfired slightly,
as a number of CL, Scheme and FP programmers have disagreed with him.
Oddly enough, some of the criticisms have been for _not_ mentioning
things like CLOS and Haskell's type system. He makes some good points,
(e.g. references to function composition and the monadic combinators)
but perhaps not enough to satisfy his critics. Why then did he start
with such a negative distinction?
I applaud Tim Sweeney for raising these issues, even if he's doing it
in a way that invites flak - from all sides. BTDT. If it helps raise
awareness of Lisp and FP in general, that's doing some good.
--
Email address intentially munged | You can never browse enough
will write code that writes code that writes code for food
> you should read the whole article and not just one sentence. You'll see
> that he recommends thinking about using this sort of language.
Thats what makes the article so silly. First he dismisses lisp and ML,
and then goes on to describe what he wants in a language as being nearly
identical to what is already present in both of these languages. I have
a feeling he has never spent any appreciable time with any of these
"research" languages.
Gavin E. Mendel-Gleason
--
"Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon."
-Alan Perlis
········@unm.edu (Gavin E. Gleason) writes:
> > you should read the whole article and not just one sentence. You'll see
> > that he recommends thinking about using this sort of language.
>
> Thats what makes the article so silly. First he dismisses lisp and ML,
> and then goes on to describe what he wants in a language as being nearly
> identical to what is already present in both of these languages. I have
> a feeling he has never spent any appreciable time with any of these
> "research" languages.
Sounds like the student repeating the teacher to me, the Slashdot post
that is, not you Gavin. "Research Language" is the sorta throwaway
term know-nothing profs use to describe anything that is not mentioned
in 50% of the "programmer wanted" ads. It's also a common term in
kiddy koder korners to describe everything that doesn't come in the
default install of their favorite Linux distribution.
--
Craig Brozefsky <·····@red-bean.com>
Free Scheme/Lisp Software http://www.red-bean.com/~craig
"riot shields. voodoo economics. its just business. cattle
prods and the IMF." - Radiohead, OK Computer, Electioneering