Back in the day when I decided to learn Lisp, (where (equal |Lisp|
|ANSI Common Lisp|)), I had to choose between Lisp and Scheme. The
reason to choose was because my brain is only so big and I wanted to
master the language. Lisp and Scheme are different enough that I
don't think I can master both at once. At least not in a reasonable
time frame. I ended up choosing Lisp over Scheme based on information
from this news group and the impression I got from looking
superficially at both languages. Not knowing either at the time, I
could hardly make a truly objective choice and not knowing any real
Scheme now I still can't. I just went along with my impression that
Lisp is an industrial language and Scheme is more of an academic
language. This is not ment to be a slight against Scheme. I just
felt that Lisp would be more useful to me.
Now I have a friend who is interested in trying Lisp. However, he has
another friend who likes Scheme. So he asked me why I choose Lisp
instead of Scheme. The answer I gave him was along the lines of,
"because Lisp has more features and is more portable than Scheme." I
don't feel like I came up with a good answer because I was asked
again. So I ask you why you choose Lisp over Scheme (or why you
choose Scheme over Lisp).
Another issue is that my friend is rather pragmatic and also basis his
choices on how he can make money. He is already a Java programmer. I
talked him through getting Emacs + SLIME setup on his OS X system, but
he is not an Emacs lover at all. He uses Vi and Eclipse. By
extension, he doesn't yet see the value of SLIME. If that isn't bad
enough, he also doesn't like the timeout and other limitations in
Lispworks PE. I think this is a case where the current state of free
Lisp tools is an obstacle to bringing someone around to Lisp.
It is important to me that the Lisp user community continues to grow
and even takes up a larger slice of the programming languages pie.
I'm sure that Lispworks PE is a perfectly good system to learn on (I
haven't tried it). I personally do like Emacs + SLIME but on OS X
that just isn't Xcode if you know what I mean. For better or worse,
the Free and Open Source software communities have created the
expectations of free tools. They aren't the only ones. I'm pretty
certain that Sun's success with Java comes largely due to their free
JVM and JDK (even though they are closed source).
--
An ideal world is left as an excercise to the reader.
--- Paul Graham, On Lisp 8.1
>why I choose Lisp... impression I got from looking superficially at
both languages
Unfortunately, I don't think there's a more practical way than this.
Being able to judge a language fairly requires actually learning it,
which just takes too long. See http://www.paulgraham.com/javacover.html
I am relatively new to Lisp, so I made this decision rather recently. I
chose CL for the same reasons, portable/features, based on a
superficial comparison.
>"because Lisp... is more portable than Scheme."
If you stick to the ANSI standard, they should both be portable, but
who sticks to the standard... The problem is that neither standard
covers all the features you need for writing programs, so specific
implementations need to fill in the gaps, which in turn makes both
unportable. On the other hand, which has more gaps to fill in, CL or
Scheme? Scheme's standard is deliberately very short. I can see how
that is aesthetically a nice thing, but it means that a larger portion
of a Schemer's code will probably be implementation specific. This is
one reason I chose CL, though I'm still not sure it is a good reason.
However many features are in the ANSI standard, CL doesn't cover
multithreading and networking which I am sure to use. I will depend on
implementation specific features whether I like it or not.
"because Lisp has more features... than Scheme."
Again, if you look at a full implementation, this might not be true.
What is true is that CL has more features covered by the ANSI
documentation. Features that can be looked up in the hyperspec and are
portable. I've heard that Scheme has continuations (and CL doesn't) but
that they are easily added to CL also.
"Common Lisp is powerful but ugly. Scheme is small and clean, but the
standard only defines the inner core of the language. If I had to
deliver an application I'd probably use Common Lisp; if I were teaching
a course I might use Scheme (but with Common Lisp macros)." -Paul
Graham-
"You have two main dialects to choose between: Scheme and Common Lisp.
They each have advantages and disadvantages, but the differences
between them are tiny compared to the differences between them and
other languages, so if you want to start learning Lisp, it doesn't
matter which you choose." -Paul Graham-
>Another issue is that my friend is rather pragmatic and
>also basis his choices on how he can make money.
If he's imagining getting a job writing Lisp, he may be wasting his
time. If he's thinking about writing excellent software and selling it,
licensing it, or otherwise building a business around it, Lisp could be
the right choice.
http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html
http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html
My own (very superficial) research has convinced me that CL is the way
to go, but I don't think it's a big deal. Scheme might be easier to
learn because its syntax is closer to other languages and because the
ANSI standard is actually readable. In the end, if he finds it wanting
in any way, it shouldn't be that hard to switch. Most of the
differences between CL and Lisp seem rather trivial anyway.
Eric Lavigne <············@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| >"because Lisp... is more portable than Scheme."
| If you stick to the ANSI standard...
+---------------
Minor correction: Common Lisp has an ANSI standard, but Scheme was
originally standardized[1] by IEEE[2], not ANSI.
-Rob
[1] Of course, some [including me] tend to view the R5RS document
as more of the "real" standard than IEEE Scheme, which is really
closer to R4RS, but that's another rathole entirely...
[2] IEEE P1178, a.k.a. IEEE Standard 1178-1990, "IEEE Standard for
the Scheme Programming Language", published by IEEE in 1991
(renewed 1995, 2002). ISBN 1-55937-125-0
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
On 12 Apr 2005 06:00:52 -0400, David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> wrote:
> So I ask you why you choose Lisp over Scheme (or why you choose
> Scheme over Lisp).
I never made this decision. I came to Common Lisp more or less by
chance and only later learned about Scheme.
As I use CL to pay my rent I get a warm and fuzzy feeling from the
fact that there are several commercially supported implementations
around. I'm not aware of any commercial Scheme implementations but I
haven't really looked for them either.
I also find CL code easier to read and understand and more
aesthetically pleasing but I'm obviously biased.
Cheers,
Edi.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
Edi Weitz <········@agharta.de> writes:
> around. I'm not aware of any commercial Scheme implementations but I
> haven't really looked for them either.
There are at least a couple commercial companies selling Scheme
implementations:
Cadence Research Systems
http://www.scheme.com/
Schemers Inc.
http://www.schemers.com/
Paolo
--
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
Recommended Common Lisp libraries/tools (see also http://clrfi.alu.org):
- ASDF/ASDF-INSTALL: system building/installation
- CL-PPCRE: regular expressions
- UFFI: Foreign Function Interface
David Steuber wrote:
> Now I have a friend who is interested in trying Lisp. However, he has
> another friend who likes Scheme. So he asked me why I choose Lisp
> instead of Scheme. The answer I gave him was along the lines of,
> "because Lisp has more features and is more portable than Scheme." I
> don't feel like I came up with a good answer because I was asked
> again. So I ask you why you choose Lisp over Scheme (or why you
> choose Scheme over Lisp).
>
I started by using Scheme, but switched for a couple of reasons.
I found the Schemes tried to be more like Common Lisp by adding
libraries to do all sorts of useful things. But they all
turned out to be half-ass libraries, especially for things like CLOS
and defmacro. Also I chose CL for the native compilers. One more
large reason was the quality of LispWorks for Windows. Simple
to install, ok GUI library ...
Things I have found extremely useful after deciding on CL(LW) are:
1) Package System
2) Condition System
3) Unwind Protect
4) Better symbols
5) Adjustable arrays
6) Multiprocessing in LW
7) Graphical Debugger
8) LW has many tools, Class Browser, Window Browser, Process Browser ...
9) LW Delivery
10) Though deficient, LW had/has better documentation than any of the Schemes
I tried.
Oh and one more thing, well... Scheme is Scheme BUT
Common Lisp IS Common Lisp.
Suggest to your friend that he learn both and decide for himself.
Wade
David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> wrote in
···················@david-steuber.com:
> So I ask you why you choose Lisp over Scheme (or why you
> choose Scheme over Lisp).
I follow this thread with interest since I'm new to both languages and
don't have a deep understanding yet of either. I only have hand-wavy
understanding of "functional programming in general" due to a previous
stint with OCaml, and a cyberlibrarian survey of all the other open
source HLLs. I have breadth of knowledge, not depth.
I am currently going up the Bigloo Scheme learning curve. My reasons for
this:
- it's a high performance Scheme -> C compiler, thus appropriate to my 3D
graphics and game AI problems.
- I'm broke and it's open source.
- I'm on Windows and there's no open source Lisp compiler available
(yet).
For my problems, budget, and platform, this is almost the only game in
town. I could attempt Stalin, but I'm not feeling that brave yet. Also,
getting other people in the game industry to adopt what I do is part of
my thinking, and Stalin strikes out there. Bigloo's "public face" is
meager but Stalin has none at all.
I await the Windows port of CMUCL with interest. I keep tabs on Lisp
because there's more software and jobs done with it than Scheme.
I could of course try Corman Lisp and worry about a commercial license
later. But the project I have in mind is substantial, and committing to
Lisp rather than Scheme is seemingly a big committment. Even committing
to a particular Lisp or Scheme implementation seems like a non-trivial
committment. I am disappointed, for instance, that apparently Corman
Lisp doesn't support UFFI. Talking to C code is critical to my concerns,
and I don't wish to "get stuck" somewhere. Of course I can easily "get
stuck" with Bigloo Scheme. But my feeling right now is, since all Lisp
and Scheme implementations offer this risk, I will pursue Bigloo until I
decide it's not working out for me.
I feel that most of these kinds of choices come down to fairly brain
dead, pragmatic decisions about what level of tools and support is
available. That is my experience having surveyed all the open source
HLLs out there. The languages matter quite a bit less than the tools and
communities. A wonder language cannot really save you a lot of work, if
it presents you with tons of basic shitwork just to get started on your
actual problems.
For instance, I am encouraged to find vastly more examples of 3D graphics
in the Lisp and Scheme universes than I ever found in the OCaml universe.
It is clear that these communities "have actually done something" and
"continue to do some things" with 3D graphics. Both languages have also
gotten used in commercial game development.
It may transpire that once I have more experience, I will come to
understand the substantive differences between Lisp and Scheme, and then
I may firmly declare myself in one camp or the other. I do, at this
point, think I have to implement all of my technologies from scratch. So
there is little value in "what others are doing," and it's going to
depend on which is the best language + implementation for my jobs.
If some implementation offered an automagical way to do C bindings, that
would slant me towards it.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> - it's a high performance Scheme -> C compiler, thus appropriate
> to my 3D graphics and game AI problems.
> - I'm broke and it's open source.
> - I'm on Windows and there's no open source Lisp compiler available
You might consider GNU Common Lisp (GCL).
······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
··················@news.dtpq.com:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> writes:
> [why I'm using Bigloo Scheme]
>>
>> - it's a high performance Scheme -> C compiler, thus appropriate
>> to my 3D graphics and game AI problems.
>> - I'm broke and it's open source.
>> - I'm on Windows and there's no open source Lisp compiler available
>
> You might consider GNU Common Lisp (GCL).
GCL compiles to machine-independent bytecode, not native code. I
suppose I am guilty of not fully specifying what I meant by a
'compiler', but in my mind it always means something that produces
native code. In other people's minds it doesn't, but again my problem
domains are 3D graphics and game AI, where native compiled performance
is highly desireable.
On Windows it relies on Cygwin, which means it's "not really Windows."
That invokes a whole pile of tool and cultural problems that I won't get
into here. More importantly, Cygwin has the cygwin1.dll GPL licensing
issue. IIUC, this may not be a problem if one is linking only Lisp
code. But if one is also linking C code, as I would be doing, then one
runs afoul of the Cygwin GPL.
Maybe there is some -mno-cygwin way of building stuff. But toolchains
usually don't expect special options and doing things out of the
ordinary tends to break builds. If someone has anecdotes to the
contrary, that they're using GCL in a production capacity on Windows and
have gotten completely free of all GPL restrictions, I'd like to hear
about that.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> GCL compiles to machine-independent bytecode, not native code.
No, GCL compiles lisp to C, which is compiled (by gcc) to native
object code. This can be done (and the object code loaded in)
at run time.
You are confusing it with GNU CLISP, a completely separate
implementation, which does what you describe.
Paul
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
> ··················@news.dtpq.com:
>
> > "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> >> - I'm on Windows and there's no open source Lisp compiler available
> >
> > You might consider GNU Common Lisp (GCL).
>
> GCL compiles to machine-independent bytecode, not native code.
Wrong. GCL compiles to native machine code.
> On Windows it relies on Cygwin, which means it's "not really Windows."
I installed GCL on my machine and did not have to deal with Cygwin.
I just downloaded an EXE file that installed everything for me.
I think the compiler uses Mingw32, but that's invisible.
GCL delivers stand-alone executables.
> I suppose I am guilty of not fully specifying what I meant by a compiler',
And here I thought you were guilty of trolling and spreading misinformation.
All of the information I have given above is widely and easily
available on the web in many places, discussed in the newsgroup,
and in the newsgroup FAQs, etc.
······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
··················@news.dtpq.com:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> writes:
>
>> ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
>> >
>> > You might consider GNU Common Lisp (GCL).
>>
>> GCL compiles to machine-independent bytecode, not native code.
>
> Wrong. GCL compiles to native machine code.
>
> [...]
>
> And here I thought you were guilty of trolling and spreading
> misinformation. All of the information I have given above is widely
> and easily available on the web in many places, discussed in the
> newsgroup, and in the newsgroup FAQs, etc.
It seems I'm not guilty of spreading misinformation, but rather of RTFM.
Apparently, RTWFM. http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes.html#compilation
To the uninitiated, "GNU CLISP" vs. "GNU Common Lisp" is an awfully easy
mistake to make.
You guys could all stand to be less pissy when people have questions
around here.
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"Troll" - (n.) Anything you don't like.
Usage: "He's just a troll."
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote in message news:<····································@207.69.189.191>...
> ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
> ··················@news.dtpq.com:
>
> > "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> > writes:
> >
> >> ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
> >> >
> >> > You might consider GNU Common Lisp (GCL).
> >>
> >> GCL compiles to machine-independent bytecode, not native code.
> >
> > Wrong. GCL compiles to native machine code.
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > And here I thought you were guilty of trolling and spreading
> > misinformation. All of the information I have given above is widely
> > and easily available on the web in many places, discussed in the
> > newsgroup, and in the newsgroup FAQs, etc.
>
> It seems I'm not guilty of spreading misinformation, but rather of RTFM.
> Apparently, RTWFM. http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes.html#compilation
> To the uninitiated, "GNU CLISP" vs. "GNU Common Lisp" is an awfully easy
> mistake to make.
>
> You guys could all stand to be less pissy when people have questions
> around here.
>
>
> Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
> Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
>
> "Troll" - (n.) Anything you don't like.
> Usage: "He's just a troll."
Hmm. If you saw your language constantly re-invented for 20 years and
get no credit, you'd get annoyed, too. It accounts for some of the
social problems of Lisp, if you ask me - with apologies to some of the
longer-term Lispers in here. I can see where both you and Brandon are
coming from.
As an aside, you could also go and look at ECLS - it compiles down to
C as well, and recently got ported to Windows (probably more recently
than your survey so it might have slipped under your radar) - with
MSVC as a target so you get the latest SSE / SIMD support, that's
important to game developers out of the box, but it has no Slime
support (yet), and ASDF is still bleeding edge.. (maybe it's not
bleeding so profusely now..again..it's moving fast and it's a couple
of weeks since I looked. The CL world in general seems to be on fire
at the moment..)
John Connors
http://badbyteblues.blogspot.com
·····@yagc.ndo.co.uk (John Connors) writes:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote in message news:<····································@207.69.189.191>...
> > ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
> > ··················@news.dtpq.com:
> >
> > > "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> > > writes:
> > >
> > >> ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
> > >> >
> > >> > You might consider GNU Common Lisp (GCL).
> > >>
> > >> GCL compiles to machine-independent bytecode, not native code.
> > >
> > > Wrong. GCL compiles to native machine code.
> > >
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > And here I thought you were guilty of trolling and spreading
> > > misinformation. All of the information I have given above is widely
> > > and easily available on the web in many places, discussed in the
> > > newsgroup, and in the newsgroup FAQs, etc.
> >
> > It seems I'm not guilty of spreading misinformation, but rather of RTFM.
> > Apparently, RTWFM. http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes.html#compilation
> > To the uninitiated, "GNU CLISP" vs. "GNU Common Lisp" is an awfully easy
> > mistake to make.
> >
> > You guys could all stand to be less pissy when people have questions
> > around here.
> >
> >
> > Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
> > Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
> >
> > "Troll" - (n.) Anything you don't like.
> > Usage: "He's just a troll."
>
> Hmm. If you saw your language constantly re-invented for 20 years and
> get no credit, you'd get annoyed, too. It accounts for some of the
> social problems of Lisp, if you ask me - with apologies to some of the
> longer-term Lispers in here. I can see where both you and Brandon are
> coming from.
Brandon was repeatedly given the information about GCL, personally,
(as well as having the information available all over the place
in very clear and understandable terms). His response was to
first ignore it, then to claim that the information was false.
That is what is annoying. It is also why the veracity of his
motivations are in doubt.
Lisp has not been constantly re-invented for 20 years.
It has been compiled to native code since before 1962.
It was "re-invented" (given more features) over the period 1979-1983,
and a subset of that invention was then embodied in standards.
Modern Lisp implementations first appeared on special hardware
in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But it was even available on
stock personal computers (for example, the Macintosh) since 1986.
Lisp was widely used on workstations in that same period.
It required what was considered a lot of memory back then.
Today, cell phones have that much memory.
A lot of portable, open source libraries have been written for
Common Lisp in the last 5 years, and there are more implementations
of Lisp available now than there were back in the good old days.
All of that information is widely available, too.
The "social problems" are not "with Lisp".
Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
> ·····@yagc.ndo.co.uk (John Connors) writes:
>
>
>>"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote in message news:<····································@207.69.189.191>...
>>
>>>······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
>>>··················@news.dtpq.com:
>>>
>>>
>>>>"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
>>>>writes:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
>>>>>
>>>>>>You might consider GNU Common Lisp (GCL).
>>>>>
>>>>>GCL compiles to machine-independent bytecode, not native code.
>>>>
>>>>Wrong. GCL compiles to native machine code.
>>>>
>>>>[...]
>>>>
>>>>And here I thought you were guilty of trolling and spreading
>>>>misinformation. All of the information I have given above is widely
>>>>and easily available on the web in many places, discussed in the
>>>>newsgroup, and in the newsgroup FAQs, etc.
>>>
>>>It seems I'm not guilty of spreading misinformation, but rather of RTFM.
>>>Apparently, RTWFM. http://clisp.cons.org/impnotes.html#compilation
>>>To the uninitiated, "GNU CLISP" vs. "GNU Common Lisp" is an awfully easy
>>>mistake to make.
>>>
>>>You guys could all stand to be less pissy when people have questions
>>>around here.
>>>
>>>
>>>Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
>>>Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
>>>
>>>"Troll" - (n.) Anything you don't like.
>>>Usage: "He's just a troll."
>>
>>Hmm. If you saw your language constantly re-invented for 20 years and
>>get no credit, you'd get annoyed, too. It accounts for some of the
>>social problems of Lisp, if you ask me - with apologies to some of the
>>longer-term Lispers in here. I can see where both you and Brandon are
>>coming from.
>
>
> Brandon was repeatedly given the information about GCL, personally,
> (as well as having the information available all over the place
> in very clear and understandable terms). His response was to
> first ignore it, then to claim that the information was false.
> That is what is annoying. It is also why the veracity of his
> motivations are in doubt.
>
> Lisp has not been constantly re-invented for 20 years.
I thought he meant by Lisp wannabes such as Python, as in "re-inventing
the wheel". Your interpretation unconsciously assumes "re-invents itself".
kt
--
Cells? Cello? Cells-Gtk?: http://www.common-lisp.net/project/cells/
Why Lisp? http://lisp.tech.coop/RtL%20Highlight%20Film
"Doctor, I wrestled with reality for forty years, and I am happy to
state that I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd
Kenny Tilton <·······@nyc.rr.com> writes:
> Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
> > ·····@yagc.ndo.co.uk (John Connors) writes:
> >
> >>"Brandon J. Van Every":
> >>>Usage: "He's just a troll."
> >>
> >>Hmm. If you saw your language constantly re-invented for 20 years and
> >>get no credit, you'd get annoyed, too. It accounts for some of the
> >>social problems of Lisp, if you ask me - with apologies to some of the
> >>longer-term Lispers in here. I can see where both you and Brandon are
> >>coming from.
> >
> > Lisp has not been constantly re-invented for 20 years.
>
> I thought he meant by Lisp wannabes such as Python, as in
> "re-inventing the wheel". Your interpretation unconsciously assumes
> "re-invents itself".
Heh heh, maybe so. The subconscious part is actually that I don't even
think of those other languages as re-inventions of Lisp, because they
are so incomplete and shoddy in that regard.
······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
>
> Brandon was repeatedly given the information about GCL, personally,
> (as well as having the information available all over the place
> in very clear and understandable terms). His response was to
> first ignore it, then to claim that the information was false.
That sure as hell isn't *my* memory of events. In the recent thread, 1
person gave 1 sentence about GCL, which I misread as being about CLISP,
'cuz they're both GNU. As for past threads, I'd like to see you dig
them up and tell me where the exact skinny on GCL was. Most of my
earlier questions were MSVC oriented, precluding GCL. And waaaaay back,
like 2 years ago, simply doensn't count.
> That is what is annoying. It is also why the veracity of his
> motivations are in doubt.
Again, you could stand to be a lot less pissy when people ask questions
around here. You spend all this time inventing motives that don't
exist.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
> >
> > Brandon was repeatedly given the information about GCL, personally,
> > (as well as having the information available all over the place
> > in very clear and understandable terms). His response was to
> > first ignore it, then to claim that the information was false.
>
> That sure as hell isn't *my* memory of events.
Use Google to re-read this thread, or improve your reading comprehension.
······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
··················@news.dtpq.com:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> writes:
>
>> ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
>> >
>> > Brandon was repeatedly given the information about GCL, personally,
>> > (as well as having the information available all over the place
>> > in very clear and understandable terms). His response was to
>> > first ignore it, then to claim that the information was false.
>>
>> That sure as hell isn't *my* memory of events.
>
> Use Google to re-read this thread, or improve your reading
> comprehension.
My memory of *this thread* is fine. Before I made the GCL vs. CLISP
mistake, I was told about GCL once, in 1 sentence, and that's all.
People like you are tiring. Your kin always wants everyone to
communicate perfectly in a world where it simply doesn't happen.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
> ··················@news.dtpq.com:
>
> > "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> > writes:
> >
> >> ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
> >> >
> >> > Brandon was repeatedly given the information about GCL, personally,
> >> > (as well as having the information available all over the place
> >> > in very clear and understandable terms). His response was to
> >> > first ignore it, then to claim that the information was false.
> >>
> >> That sure as hell isn't *my* memory of events.
> >
> > Use Google to re-read this thread, or improve your reading
> > comprehension.
>
> My memory of *this thread* is fine. Before I made the GCL vs. CLISP
> mistake, I was told about GCL once, in 1 sentence, and that's all.
> People like you are tiring. Your kin always wants everyone to
> communicate perfectly in a world where it simply doesn't happen.
No, we just want people to read a little bit carefully and
not act like morons. We also want people, when they ask us
for information, to not reply by telling us that we are wrong.
I'm not responding to any more of your requests for information,
since you don't want my help. You already alienated a bunch of
other people, too. We've wasted enough time on you.
······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
··················@news.dtpq.com:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> writes:
>>
>> My memory of *this thread* is fine. Before I made the GCL vs. CLISP
>> mistake, I was told about GCL once, in 1 sentence, and that's all.
>> People like you are tiring. Your kin always wants everyone to
>> communicate perfectly in a world where it simply doesn't happen.
>
> No, we just want people to read a little bit carefully and
> not act like morons. We also want people, when they ask us
> for information, to not reply by telling us that we are wrong.
You may want that, but it's a wholly unreasonable stance, as people can
and do make simple errors. It's not like I originally said, "BULLSHIT,
you're WRONG about GCL compiling to native code, bite me!!!" If that's
the way you actually interpret simple statements, then you need to
lighten up.
> I'm not responding to any more of your requests for information,
> since you don't want my help.
I agree that I do not want your help in particular. It comes with too
much hostility over nothing.
> You already alienated a bunch of
> other people, too. We've wasted enough time on you.
If you say so. We shall see.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT BRANDON J. VAN EVERY BEFORE REPLYING TO
ONE OF HIS POSTS
1. He has never designed any game, nor contributed to the design of
any game, which has ever seen the light of day, despite referring
to himself as a "game designer." (In rebuttal, he pointed out his
"one complete game" from "1983" on the "Atari 800" which he showed
to his "8th grade math teacher.")
2. He has never been employed in the game industry, in any way,
shape, manner or form. Despite this, for some reason he managed
to get named as an Independent Games Festival judge; a curious
turn of events, since their stated intent is to appoint
"professionals in the game industry" (their quote, not his).
3. In fact, the only programming job he had listed on his resume was
for only "2 years" ending in "1998," working in C and assembly on
a graphics driver, as a "Sr. Software Engineer" -- a curious
title, since this was his first (and only) job in the software
industry. There is no evidence he has used C++, nor any other
language, professionally. (And the company in question is
defunct, anyway, so there is no way to verify his claim.)
4. The other jobs he has mentioned having after this one and only
items on his resume are: "yard maintenance work," "sub minimum
wage signature gathering," and working for "$5/hour at a
Vietnamese restaurant."
5. The only personal project he actually wrote code for and made
available in some manner was Free3d, a software 3D rendering
engine. Stating that its goals were to be "100% efficient, 100%
portable" and to release it in a "one year time frame," which he
started in "1993" and abandoned in "1996," admitting that it
"barely drew even a single polygon" and "did hardly anything in
the 3D department."
6. Almost every Internet community (Usenet newsgroup, mailing list,
etc.) he has ever introduced himself to has resulted in him
repeating the same pattern: asking leading questions, demanding
people do things his way, becoming hostile, annoying the other
participants, alienating them, and finally leaving in disgust.
7. Of the projects (open source and otherwise) whose communities he
has (briefly) joined, he has never contributed anything tangible
in terms of code or documentation.
8. The project he has intermittently claimed to be working on, Ocean
Mars, is vaporware -- and is one of his admitted "failures." He
allegedly sunk "nine months of full time 60 hours/week" and about
"$60K" into it with only a "spherical hexified icosahedron"
display to show for it (only allegedly, since it has never been
shown or demonstrated publicly).
9. Since his embarassing frustration with his Ocean Mars project, he
has decided that C and C++ aren't "worth anything as a resume
skill anymore," and embarked on a quest in 2003 to find a
high-level language that will suit his needs. After more than a
year, at least ten languages, and not having even "written a line
of code" in any of them, he still has yet to find a language that
will suit him.
10. Finally, despite vehemently insisting that he is not a troll, many
people quite understandingly have great difficulty distinguishing
his public behavior from that of a troll.
············@yahoo.com wrote in news:1113767060.643192.130470
>
> (In rebuttal, he pointed out his
> "one complete game" from "1983" on the "Atari 800" which he showed
> to his "8th grade math teacher.")
What on Earth do you use so many quotation marks for?
I have rebutted your article once, which is plenty and now a matter of
public record. Now I place you in my killfile, where I will ignore you
for a long time. If I wake up some day years later, and see that you've
done something over the years that amounts to substantive libel as
opposed to net kookery, I'll take legal action. You have been warned.
I give you the benefit of the doubt that you are young, foolish, and
don't have good ways to spend your time. Eventually, you will probably
tire of this game and find better ways to spend your time. Or at least
go pick on somebody else. But on the possibility that you are a more
bizzare and obsessive person than this, again, you have been warned.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
> What on Earth do you use so many quotation marks for?
To indicate they're direct quotations from you. You were interested in
accuracy, so I made sure that there was no misinterpretation. The
quotations make it clear that you actually did say those embarrassing
things about yourself in rebuttal, rather than it just being me putting
words in your mouth.
> I have rebutted your article once, which is plenty and now a matter
> of public record.
You complained about one version of it, which I revised to address each
of your comments (with the exception of one which was just poor reading
comprehension on your part). The revised version is now completely
accurate according to your own analysis.
> If I wake up some day years later, and see that you've
> done something over the years that amounts to substantive libel as
> opposed to net kookery, I'll take legal action.
Okay, sparky! Nice to see you admit, though, that your earlier claim
of libel was bullshit.
Sorry to everyone else about forgetting to put the [BVE PSA] marker in
the latest round (to make these threads easily killable). They'll only
be posted when he makes incursions into other communities, anyway.
············@yahoo.com wrote:
>>What on Earth do you use so many quotation marks for?
>
> To indicate they're direct quotations from you. You were interested in
> accuracy, so I made sure that there was no misinterpretation.
The following is one large quotation:
"The 'Fun with usenet' manifesto"
Very little happens on Usenet without some sort of response from
some other reader. Fun With Usenet postings are no exception. Since
there are some who might question the rationale of some of the excerpts
included therein, I have written up a list of guidelines that sum up
the philosophy behind these postings.
One. I never cut out words in the middle of a quote without a VERY good
reason, and I never cut them out without including ellipses. For instance,
"I am not a goob" might become "I am ... a goob", but that's too mundane
to bother with. "I'm flame proof" might (and has) become
"I'm ...a... p...oof" but that's REALLY stretching it.
Two. If I cut words off the beginning or end of a quote, I don't put
ellipses, but neither do I capitalize something that wasn't capitalized
before the cut. "I don't think that the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful
place" would turn into "the Church of Ubizmo is a wonderful place". Imagine
the posting as a tape-recording of the poster's thoughts. If I can set
up the quote via fast-forwarding and stopping the tape, and without
splicing, I don't put ellipses in. And by the way, I love using this
mechanism for turning things around. If you think something stinks, say
so - don't say you don't think it's wonderful.
D. J. McCarthy
--
Jens Axel Søgaard
Greetings!
Am obviously late to this discussion, but I just wanted to state on
behalf of the GCL project that I hope none of this misunderstanding
gives you a sour impression of GCL. The community is quite friendly
and open -- you can forward any questions to ·········@gnu.org should
you desire. In general, we have little time for following usenet.
Take care,
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in
> ··················@news.dtpq.com:
>
> > "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> > writes:
> >>
> >> My memory of *this thread* is fine. Before I made the GCL vs. CLISP
> >> mistake, I was told about GCL once, in 1 sentence, and that's all.
> >> People like you are tiring. Your kin always wants everyone to
> >> communicate perfectly in a world where it simply doesn't happen.
> >
> > No, we just want people to read a little bit carefully and
> > not act like morons. We also want people, when they ask us
> > for information, to not reply by telling us that we are wrong.
>
> You may want that, but it's a wholly unreasonable stance, as people can
> and do make simple errors. It's not like I originally said, "BULLSHIT,
> you're WRONG about GCL compiling to native code, bite me!!!" If that's
> the way you actually interpret simple statements, then you need to
> lighten up.
>
> > I'm not responding to any more of your requests for information,
> > since you don't want my help.
>
> I agree that I do not want your help in particular. It comes with too
> much hostility over nothing.
>
> > You already alienated a bunch of
> > other people, too. We've wasted enough time on you.
>
> If you say so. We shall see.
>
>
> --
> Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
> Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
>
> "The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
> - anonymous entrepreneur
--
Camm Maguire ····@enhanced.com
==========================================================================
"The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens." -- Baha'u'llah
Camm Maguire wrote:
>Greetings!
>
>Am obviously late to this discussion, but I just wanted to state on
>behalf of the GCL project that I hope none of this misunderstanding
>gives you a sour impression of GCL. The community is quite friendly
>and open -- you can forward any questions to ·········@gnu.org should
>you desire. In general, we have little time for following usenet.
>
>
Thanks, and not to worry: I'm very good at separating the e-mails of
individual posters from those of project mailing lists I've yet to set
foot in. :-)
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
Brandon's Law (after Godwin's Law):
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of
a person being called a troll approaches one RAPIDLY."
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> GCL compiles to machine-independent bytecode, not native code.
Go away, now.
Christophe
On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 01:23:09 GMT, "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote:
> ······@news.dtpq.com (Christopher C. Stacy) wrote in ··················@news.dtpq.com:
>
>> You might consider GNU Common Lisp (GCL).
>
> GCL compiles to machine-independent bytecode, not native code.
No.
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
On Tue, 12 Apr 2005 19:23:11 GMT, Brandon J. Van Every
<·····················@mycompanyname.com> wrote:
> David Steuber <·····@david-steuber.com> wrote in
> ···················@david-steuber.com:
>
>> So I ask you why you choose Lisp over Scheme (or why you
>> choose Scheme over Lisp).
>
> I follow this thread with interest since I'm new to both languages and
> don't have a deep understanding yet of either. I only have hand-wavy
> understanding of "functional programming in general" due to a previous
> stint with OCaml, and a cyberlibrarian survey of all the other open
> source HLLs. I have breadth of knowledge, not depth.
>
> I am currently going up the Bigloo Scheme learning curve. My reasons for
> this:
>
> - it's a high performance Scheme -> C compiler, thus appropriate to my 3D
> graphics and game AI problems.
>
> - I'm broke and it's open source.
>
> - I'm on Windows and there's no open source Lisp compiler available
> (yet).
>
> For my problems, budget, and platform, this is almost the only game in
> town. I could attempt Stalin, but I'm not feeling that brave yet. Also,
> getting other people in the game industry to adopt what I do is part of
> my thinking, and Stalin strikes out there. Bigloo's "public face" is
> meager but Stalin has none at all.
>
> I await the Windows port of CMUCL with interest. I keep tabs on Lisp
> because there's more software and jobs done with it than Scheme.
>
> I could of course try Corman Lisp and worry about a commercial license
> later. But the project I have in mind is substantial, and committing to
> Lisp rather than Scheme is seemingly a big committment. Even committing
> to a particular Lisp or Scheme implementation seems like a non-trivial
> committment. I am disappointed, for instance, that apparently Corman
> Lisp doesn't support UFFI. Talking to C code is critical to my concerns,
> and I don't wish to "get stuck" somewhere. Of course I can easily "get
> stuck" with Bigloo Scheme. But my feeling right now is, since all Lisp
> and Scheme implementations offer this risk, I will pursue Bigloo until I
> decide it's not working out for me.
>
> I feel that most of these kinds of choices come down to fairly brain
> dead, pragmatic decisions about what level of tools and support is
> available. That is my experience having surveyed all the open source
> HLLs out there. The languages matter quite a bit less than the tools and
> communities. A wonder language cannot really save you a lot of work, if
> it presents you with tons of basic shitwork just to get started on your
> actual problems.
>
> For instance, I am encouraged to find vastly more examples of 3D graphics
> in the Lisp and Scheme universes than I ever found in the OCaml universe.
> It is clear that these communities "have actually done something" and
> "continue to do some things" with 3D graphics. Both languages have also
> gotten used in commercial game development.
>
> It may transpire that once I have more experience, I will come to
> understand the substantive differences between Lisp and Scheme, and then
> I may firmly declare myself in one camp or the other. I do, at this
> point, think I have to implement all of my technologies from scratch. So
> there is little value in "what others are doing," and it's going to
> depend on which is the best language + implementation for my jobs.
>
> If some implementation offered an automagical way to do C bindings, that
> would slant me towards it.
>
>
Well, the Corman Lisp you just mentioned can generate C interfaces from the
C header file.
--
Using M2, Opera's revolutionary e-mail client: http://www.opera.com/m2/
This gets a bit off topic from the original thread, but Corman Lisp
lisp has a very good FFI and a good C header file slurper. I've used
both and have been pleased.
I remember reading that someone had ported UFFI to it, though I can't
seem to google it, so I may be mistaken. (Was it Kenny when porting
Cells around?)
And there are OpenGL and SDL bindings available for it as well (not
from Corman, from Luke J Crook)
Corman is also the only Lisp that I know of with an inline assembler.
That's always fun.
I don't know how it stacks up against Bigloo speedwise. I understand
that Bigloo is pretty fast.
Chris
This is a bit hard for me to articulate well, but bear with me. I see
Scheme almost as a kind of axiomatic approach to programming, moreso
than other Lisps anyway. It actively tries to keep the core language
small so that using a tiny number of primitives, you can build
everything else you find in other languages. It's not just a matter of
aesthetics though, it has a profound effect on how you think.
Imagine you're looking outward at the world. Scheme flattens the
horizon so that you can see farther while Common Lisp just gives you a
damned good telescope, eyes stronger than an eagle's and a whole bag
full of other tools to help you see. Compare with C, which drops you
in a hilly terrain that has you climbing all over the place to see
anything far at all. Then there's Java, which erects an entire city
around you and tells you that's the world. Then people notice patterns
in their traffic system, which everyone proceeds to use around the city
and are amazed when foreigners come in and don't do the same. Ok maybe
I'm taking the analogy too far now....
The point is, Scheme is minimalistic, yes, but it's also empowering in
that its primitives are not just able to recreate what's present in
other languages, but whatever else you can think up. To me, it tries
to help you explore what lies beyond particulars like say, the set of
looping constructs that just happen to be picked for inclusion in a
language. To a Schemer, the idea of something like having a for loop
is silly because it's just one form of what can be stated using
recursion (though you're free to make things syntactically more
convenient with macros, the built-in do or named let). Similarly,
exceptions are just one specific use of continuations. The challenge
that Scheme issues to you is, what else can you form with these
primitives?
Common Lisp is more practical and focuses more on getting things done
and getting them done well. So it not only has many things present in
other languages, but it generalizes them to the point that they can be
wielded much more powerfully. Consider multimethods vs single
dispatch, format vs printf, sequences vs some other language's
containers, etc. It's like taking best practices and then putting
those on steroids. And though it doesn't try to be axiomatic,
everything it comes with is powerful enough so that the end result is
really, IMO, mostly as expressive as Scheme.
Take this all with a grain of salt, though. I'm still a journeyman
with Scheme and it's just my hobby language. Sadly, it's PHP that pays
the bills for me :'(
"Myron Wu" wrote:
>
> Imagine you're looking outward at the world. Scheme flattens the
> horizon so that you can see farther while Common Lisp just gives you a
> damned good telescope, eyes stronger than an eagle's and a whole bag
> full of other tools to help you see. Compare with C, which drops you
> in a hilly terrain that has you climbing all over the place to see
> anything far at all. Then there's Java, which erects an entire city
> around you and tells you that's the world. Then people notice
> patterns in their traffic system, which everyone proceeds to use
> around the city and are amazed when foreigners come in and don't do
> the same. Ok maybe I'm taking the analogy too far now....
Actually to me as a game developer it all sounds apropos!
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Myron Wu wrote:
> Imagine you're looking outward at the world. Scheme flattens the
> horizon so that you can see farther while Common Lisp just gives you a
> damned good telescope, eyes stronger than an eagle's and a whole bag
> full of other tools to help you see. Compare with C, which drops you
> in a hilly terrain that has you climbing all over the place to see
> anything far at all. Then there's Java, which erects an entire city
> around you and tells you that's the world. Then people notice patterns
> in their traffic system, which everyone proceeds to use around the city
> and are amazed when foreigners come in and don't do the same. Ok maybe
> I'm taking the analogy too far now....
The java people wonder when foreigners come in with their own cars
that can drive twice as fast and far with the same amount of fuel
(memory) ;)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
David Steuber wrote:
> I'm sure that Lispworks PE is a perfectly good system to learn on (I
> haven't tried it). I personally do like Emacs + SLIME but on OS X
> that just isn't Xcode if you know what I mean. For better or worse,
> the Free and Open Source software communities have created the
> expectations of free tools. They aren't the only ones. I'm pretty
> certain that Sun's success with Java comes largely due to their free
> JVM and JDK (even though they are closed source).
I think many Lisp users are blinded to how hard Emacs is. I don't mean
that as a harsh judgement, but I think it comes across as dishonest to
claim otherwise, and has effects as if it were dishonesty.
The muscles need time to gain 'muscle memory' or whatever it is. This
is not a criticism of Lisp or opensource developers, because this is a
development resource problem, but it is a mild criticism of those who
advocate Lisp and then make you feel like an idiot if Emacs is painful.
CLisp + Slime + Windows is buggy.
I agree that Java's success is due to free JVM/JDK; Emacs and Unix's
successes are similar.
> Now I have a friend who is interested in trying Lisp. However, he
has
> another friend who likes Scheme. So he asked me why I choose Lisp
> instead of Scheme. The answer I gave him was along the lines of,
> "because Lisp has more features and is more portable than Scheme." I
> don't feel like I came up with a good answer because I was asked
> again. So I ask you why you choose Lisp over Scheme (or why you
> choose Scheme over Lisp).
Schemer: "Buddha is small, clean, and serious."
Lispnik: "Buddha is big, has hairy armpits, and laughs."
I chose Python over Scheme. Lisp came later.
Long story short, I realized that Scheme wasn't "an improved, modern
Lisp" as someone told me. ;) Endlessly bending one's mind to use
recursion is not a liberation, just another straitjacket. I realize
that the main Scheme texts may give a distorted view of Scheme,
however.
CL has too many brilliant, interesting systems within it, like the
Conditions System or special variables. I don't know how people can
write robust code without them, without getting sick of coding. On the
flipside, this may make CL scary...
I don't think CL is the best tool for everyone, because I think there
are Schemers who've made informed judgements without being clouded by
lies and ideology. So my only wish is that people are able to make such
choices without reality distortion fields. I know many people desire
this, because I do, and I meet people who do.
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> I think many Lisp users are blinded to how hard Emacs is. I don't mean
> that as a harsh judgement, but I think it comes across as dishonest to
> claim otherwise, and has effects as if it were dishonesty.
Well a lisp VM like Squeak for Smalltalk would be nice.
But in the meantime, if you don't want to try to master emacs + slime,
and a satisfied with spartiate IDE, you can use just emacs + inferior-lisp
which works well enough. Otherwise, there's always the commercial GUI IDEs.
> CLisp + Slime + Windows is buggy.
Did you try: VisualCLisp + clisp + Microsoft Windows?
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
The world will now reboot. don't bother saving your artefacts.
Pascal Bourguignon wrote:
> "Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> > I think many Lisp users are blinded to how hard Emacs is. I
> > don't mean that as a harsh judgement, but I think it comes
> > across as dishonest to claim otherwise, and has effects as
> > if it were dishonesty.
>
> But in the meantime, if you don't want to try to master
> emacs + slime, and a satisfied with spartiate IDE, you can
> use just emacs + inferior-lisp which works well enough.
> Otherwise, there's always the commercial GUI IDEs.
I personally enjoy Emacs, but am aware of the pain many feel in
becoming proficient in it. I recall what it was like.
> > CLisp + Slime + Windows is buggy.
>
> Did you try: VisualCLisp + clisp + Microsoft Windows?
Wow, never heard of it, looks good.
"Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
> I think many Lisp users are blinded to how hard Emacs is. I don't mean
> that as a harsh judgement, but I think it comes across as dishonest to
> claim otherwise, and has effects as if it were dishonesty.
My opinion, from teaching all kinds of people to use Emacs over the
last 25 years, is that Emacs is not difficult to learn, if you are
really up for learning something that is different from what you expect.
That is, Emacs is generally well-designed and comprehensible.
But it is very difficult for most people to self-learn, and Emacs
is emphatically not self-documenting enough for today's users.
Realize that most people will not pick up a book or manual to learn
Emacs, and many will not even sit through the online tutorial.
Today, people have many more preconceptions of what an editor is,
and how to use it, than they did back when Emacs was cutting edge
technology. The expectations are different. Emacs does not obey
the standard UI conventions on the platforms that people use today.
Emacs (even XEmacs) does not have good enough menus, which is what
most people want, and what they turn to for navigation and training.
The online help is not indexed in a way that is productive.
People want to learn their editor by just diving in and using it,
and they expect that it will obey a universal keyboard and mouse
command set, that the editor will be mainly mouse-oriented,
and that all functions will be available from a GUI.
There is also some expected functionality that Emacs just lacks.
Even people who can quickly learn a small basic Emacs command set
will be quickly frustrated at the lack of GUI support for easily
doing things like changing fonts and colors and source-comparisons.
They are also not liable to want to make customizations by writing
Emacs-Lisp expressions in an init file. Commercial editors let
you quickly locate and execute those kinds of operations (and much
more) from an easy-to-understand menu.
XEmacs in particular has tried to make progress in this area.
Sorry, it's just not anywhere near good enough!
Never mind the potential confusions over the fact
that "Emacs is written in Lisp".
(Not that I would personally ever consider seriously using
anything other than Emacs or some spiritual incarnation of it).
The obstacles to learning something new are not to be underestimated.
Adding an editor into the mix that is so incompatible with what people
are expecting, seriously adds to the learning and discouragement curve.
Some versions of IDE Emacs are friendlier than others; see below.
> The muscles need time to gain 'muscle memory' or whatever it is.
> This is not a criticism of Lisp or opensource developers, because
> this is a development resource problem, but it is a mild criticism
> of those who advocate Lisp and then make you feel like an idiot if
> Emacs is painful.
In order to just write Lisp source code, you need an editor that
can balance parenthesis and indent Lisp code. For example, on Unix,
"vi" will do this for you (set "sm", "ai" and "lisp"). I believe
that most commercial "programmer's editors" on Windows also support
Lisp in at least this way. Some even have syntax coloring.
While (some pick your flavor of) Emacs has the best support for
editing Lisp code, and is generally favored by Lisp hackers,
it is by no means necessary to use Emacs. Some commercial IDEs
include an Emacs. Some of them just have a very simple editor.
The issue is that many of the benfits of Lisp are from its IDE model,
which allows for a very tight integration of the editor, compiler,
and the interactive top level and debugger. In particular, dynamic
compilation at the function-level, automatic source code location,
and argument information. If all you have is a text editor, then you
are closer to a the more traditionally seperate edit-compile-debug cycle.
> CLisp + Slime + Windows is buggy.
I would tend to suggest one of the commercial Lisp systems,
which come with more sophisicated and IDEs, which are not buggy.
Most of these are more GUI oriented.
I think all of those support mouse operations, inserting and
deleting, scrolling, mouse-marking, and IDE menu commands.
So you don't really need to use Emacs to use them, and their
IDE functionality (eg. accessing the compiler and debugger)
are not tied directly to understanding Emacs.
> I agree that Java's success is due to free JVM/JDK;
Now we're changing subjects.
I think Java's success is due to a massive marketing campaign
and billion dollar push to dominate the industry, well-timed
against the dissatisfaction with C++, Internet hype, and the
promise of Java applets (which never really materialized).
The fact that the JVM was free was critical, since it allowed
widespread deployment of Java. But don't confuse that with "javac".
The same people who paid big bucks for Microsoft and C++ compilers
would have paid money for the Java compiler. (In many cases, they
did buy alternative compilers, and to this day they still do pay
money for Java development tools.) Free software (in any sense
of the word) was not a significant factor in the rise of Java.
The purpose of the free JVM is simply to allow the programs to execute
on the end-user's machine. C and C++ also have "free" redistribution
licenses) runtime support -- either purchased along with the operating
system, or comparable redistribution licenses.
Lisp (from most vendors) is in the same position -- you can deliver
full executables (eg. Lispworks for Windows, Corman Lisp, etc.) or
you can redistribute the runtime libraries (CMUCL, CLISP, etc.)
> Emacs and Unix's successes are similar.
I'm not sure at all what I think about that.
> Long story short, I realized that Scheme wasn't "an improved,
> modern Lisp" as someone told me. ;)
Always be wary of things that are "modern", or "new and improved",
They're probably just selling you SOAP [1] or something!
Common Lisp and Scheme each have strengths and weaknesses and areas
overlap and areas of total philosophical disagreement. See Kent Pitman's
insightful article, "Lambda: The Ultimate Political Party".
[1] "Now with XML. for that fresh feeling!"
Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
>>Long story short, I realized that Scheme wasn't "an improved,
>>modern Lisp" as someone told me. ;)
>
>
> Always be wary of things that are "modern", or "new and improved",
> They're probably just selling you SOAP [1] or something!
Or RSS, which is NNTP without the advantages, and of course new
and XML-based. Why use the old stuff when you can develop a new,
more complex solution that does less?
> [1] "Now with XML. for that fresh feeling!"
It's just like most clothes or CDs I see in stores. They are
expensive and suck nonetheless. Maybe they got a nice brand name
stamped all over the crappy-looking shirt. I don't buy that ;)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote in
····················@individual.net:
> Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
>>>Long story short, I realized that Scheme wasn't "an improved,
>>>modern Lisp" as someone told me. ;)
>>
>>
>> Always be wary of things that are "modern", or "new and improved",
>> They're probably just selling you SOAP [1] or something!
>
> Or RSS, which is NNTP without the advantages, and of course new
> and XML-based. Why use the old stuff when you can develop a new,
> more complex solution that does less?
Well, at SeaFunc last night http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SeaFunc other
people were rather bullish about RSS. It allows people to 'pull' from
blogs everywhere. This allows a complete decentralization of Internet
communication. It is possible to monitor and score many Blog articles
without having to manually initiate an interaction with the site. Thus
one could vastly extend one's communication and reach into the realm of
techie mindshare. I've not been previously aware of this universe,
being an old Usenet hand. As I do want to grow SeaFunc, and also push
whatever technological solutions I eventually find for my game
development, this is quite valuable to me. Such an enabling technology
is awfully useful for "indie guerilla marketing."
You might say, bah, they should have used news servers. That would be
dumb, as they only offer plain text output. Anyone who thinks plain
text is the only valid means of Internet communication is stuck in a
pre-web mindset. Newsgroups just ain't the way most of the internet
business gets done nowadays.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> It allows people to 'pull' from blogs everywhere.
How else would you read them? They're just Web pages. Your Web browser
pulls, or you don't see it.
> This allows a complete decentralization of Internet communication.
How so? How is "Internet communication" centralized without RSS?
> It is possible to monitor and score many Blog articles without
> having to manually initiate an interaction with the site.
But you are initiating a connection manually with each site, only
perhaps your Web browser or "aggregator" is doing it under a different
guise, the same way as, say, opening a whole folder of bookmarks at
once. The only difference is that the agent may hide results that
don't report any new content worth seeing.
RSS neither adds nor removes anything from the /fetching/ of Web
resources one wishes to keep up with. The difference is in the data
presented with those resources. By formalizing the publication or
modification time of each article within a rolling table of contents,
an agent can resolve which of these articles is new. As mentioned,
NNTP has had this "feature" since its inception, as does IMAP.
The same bookkeeping is possible with raw HTTP, on a per-resource
basis. Witness the "live bookmark" idea that's been around much longer
than RSS. The problem was how to track an evolving /collection/ of
related resources. RSS takes some of the HTTP header (meta)data and
puts it alongside the content, making this tracking easier.
I won't deny that RSS is convenient, but it's nothing amazing, and I'd
rather use NNTP when possible. To me, Gmane is much more of a
marvel. You should be delighted; it even offers RSS.�
Footnotes:
� http://www.gmane.org/rss.php
--
Steven E. Harris
Steven E. Harris wrote:
> I won't deny that RSS is convenient, but it's nothing amazing, and I'd
> rather use NNTP when possible. To me, Gmane is much more of a
> marvel. You should be delighted; it even offers RSS.�
>
>
> Footnotes:
> � http://www.gmane.org/rss.php
Thanks, that looks nice.
What's missing is probably just a nice weblog system with builtin
NNTP and RSS feed, although a friend of mine runs a PHP-BB with
both. Have to ask him... :)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
"Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> writes:
> I won't deny that RSS is convenient, but it's nothing amazing, and I'd
> rather use NNTP when possible. To me, Gmane is much more of a
> marvel. You should be delighted; it even offers RSS.�
It's so useful that there are tens of little perl, ruby or lisp
scripts to fetch periodically RSS and forward them as email.
--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/
Until real software engineering is developed, the next best practice
is to develop with a dynamic system that has extreme late binding in
all aspects. The first system to really do this in an important way
is Lisp. -- Alan Kay
Pascal Bourguignon <····@mouse-potato.com> writes:
> It's so useful that there are tens of little perl, ruby or lisp
> scripts to fetch periodically RSS and forward them as email.
Behold the Rube Goldberg reinvention of mailing lists.
--
Steven E. Harris
"Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> wrote in
····················@W003275.na.alarismed.com:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com>
> writes:
>
>> It allows people to 'pull' from blogs everywhere.
>
> How else would you read them? They're just Web pages. Your Web browser
> pulls, or you don't see it.
Clearly, blogs could 'push' to subscribers. They could even be less
specfically subscribed, if someone offered a front-end aggregation
service for many blogs.
>> This allows a complete decentralization of Internet communication.
>
> How so? How is "Internet communication" centralized without RSS?
The Usenet Big 8 most certainly is. The mechanism may be distributed,
but the view is highly centralized.
>> It is possible to monitor and score many Blog articles without
>> having to manually initiate an interaction with the site.
>
> But you are initiating a connection manually with each site, only
> perhaps your Web browser or "aggregator" is doing it under a different
> guise, the same way as, say, opening a whole folder of bookmarks at
> once. The only difference is that the agent may hide results that
> don't report any new content worth seeing.
By all means, show us these web browsers that package up exactly the
same functionality of scouring the web for content of interest.
Aggregator technologies are important, regardless of the protocols
they're implemented upon.
I think the problem here is we're talking at cross-purposes, with you
taking the role of Techie and me taking the role of Suit. You are
saying, RSS protocol is not a particularly interesting technology. I am
saying, RSS is a particularly interesting social nexus for marketing and
community formation.
> I won't deny that RSS is convenient,
NOW you're getting it. :-)
> but it's nothing amazing, and I'd
> rather use NNTP when possible. To me, Gmane is much more of a
> marvel. You should be delighted; it even offers RSS.�
You're probably vastly more interested in tech than world conquest.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> Clearly, blogs could 'push' to subscribers.
Yes, but consider the cheerleading for RSS as an improvement over
pundit-pushed mailing lists. These were "pull-once" by way of
subscription, then push thereafter. People were always complaining
that the messages were spam, couldn't filter them into buckets, and
couldn't figure out how to unsubscribe. In other words, too many
people either use inadequate tools to manage their incoming e-mail or
don't care enough to figure it out.
> They could even be less specfically subscribed, if someone offered a
> front-end aggregation service for many blogs.
You just invented Bloglines: http://www.bloglines.com/myblogs
That's the only way I use RSS. I hit that site a couple of times a
day, seeing what amounts to my own little site-of-sites. Bloglines
does the polling, pulling, caching, and bookkeeping.
Like the transformations mentioned elsewhere in this thread, it takes
Web sites referred to by RSS and turns the collection back into a
single Web site. If there were multiple Bloglines-like sites I polled,
I'd probably have to tie those together again too.
> The Usenet Big 8 most certainly is. The mechanism may be
> distributed, but the view is highly centralized.
True. But even beyond Gmane, it's possible for specific news servers
to host small sets of groups, even if other servers don't propagate
those groups. I concede that the overhead in getting one's writing
onto a news server is much higher than sticking Web pages and
attendant RSS files on a Web server, or pouring one's heart into some
Roach Motel system like Blogger or LiveJournal.
> By all means, show us these web browsers that package up exactly the
> same functionality of scouring the web for content of interest.
I was referring to features in older versions of Internet Explorer
(and perhaps Netscape) around 1997 that allowed one to designate
certain bookmarks as "live" or something. The browser would keep track
of the last update time for the resources pointed to by these
bookmarks. Based on some periodicity or upon explicit command, the
browser would poll for each bookmark to see if the respective resource
had been updated. If so, the browser would highlight the bookmark and
perhaps download the resource, caching it for later viewing.
Again, it's not quite the same thing as RSS, but it's partway
there. An author publishing a periodic journal would have to call each
updated entry by the same name, such as "current.html", perhaps
redirecting to a more stable name for the actual entry.
> I think the problem here is we're talking at cross-purposes, with you
> taking the role of Techie and me taking the role of Suit.
Guilty as charged. That's my assumed mindset in a group like this.
> You are saying, RSS protocol is not a particularly interesting
> technology.
Picking nits, and only because I want to say something complementary
right afterward, RSS is not a protocol, but rather a data format. It's
usually fetched over HTTP and has certain semantic assumptions about
what the consumer intends to do with the data conveyed, but it's more
akin to, say, RFC 822 than NNTP.
On the upside, RSS is one of the first embraced examples of separating
data from the consuming application. By that, I mean that there's a
great variety in style and intent of the applications that consume
RSS. Sure, mail and news clients can vary greatly in looks and
features, but they all exist with more or less the same intentions.
Fetching binaries with a special purpose NNTP-aware program may be a
counterexample.
> I am saying, RSS is a particularly interesting social nexus for
> marketing and community formation.
I can't speak to that because I'm not quite sure what you mean. Can
you elaborate? It does sound interesting.
> You're probably vastly more interested in tech than world conquest.
Yes, conquest is my /next/ project, unless something more pressing
comes up first.
--
Steven E. Harris
Steven E. Harris wrote:
>>The Usenet Big 8 most certainly is. The mechanism may be
>>distributed, but the view is highly centralized.
The DNS top-level domains are centralized too. So what?
>
> True. But even beyond Gmane, it's possible for specific news servers
> to host small sets of groups, even if other servers don't propagate
> those groups. I concede that the overhead in getting one's writing
> onto a news server is much higher than sticking Web pages and
> attendant RSS files on a Web server, or pouring one's heart into some
> Roach Motel system like Blogger or LiveJournal.
Overhead? Well, opening Thunderbird and just clicking reply or
new-message is certainly easier than directing my browser to a
specific bookmark, logging in (if I'm not already), clicking
reply, and submitting text. Every of these "context switches"
causes another HTML page to load, which might take time, too. I
certainly prefer *real* applications that prefer some kind of
protocol to web interfaces, especially if those web interfaces
make a horizontal scrollbar appear in my browser window (like
those stupid, ugly, vastly popular 3-column-layouts).
>>By all means, show us these web browsers that package up exactly the
>>same functionality of scouring the web for content of interest.
>
>
> I was referring to features in older versions of Internet Explorer
> (and perhaps Netscape) around 1997 that allowed one to designate
> certain bookmarks as "live" or something. The browser would keep track
> of the last update time for the resources pointed to by these
> bookmarks. Based on some periodicity or upon explicit command, the
> browser would poll for each bookmark to see if the respective resource
> had been updated. If so, the browser would highlight the bookmark and
> perhaps download the resource, caching it for later viewing.
And its sequel Mozilla. Open a bookmark's properties dialog. I
have never used anything there, but I remember seeing all kinds of
options there...
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> Steven E. Harris wrote:
>>>The Usenet Big 8 most certainly is. The mechanism may be
>>>distributed, but the view is highly centralized.
>
> The DNS top-level domains are centralized too. So what?
I didn't write that, so Mr. Van Every can respond to that one.
> Overhead? Well, opening Thunderbird and just clicking reply or
> new-message is certainly easier than directing my browser to a
> specific bookmark, logging in (if I'm not already), clicking
> reply, and submitting text.
I wasn't clear enough when I wrote "overhead in getting one's writing
onto a news server". I should have written "overhead in getting a news
server set up with a newsgroup to which one can freely post," or just
"overhead in getting a newsgroup created." Sure, it's not the posting
that's the problem; it's getting that publicly-accessible stage set
up.
> And its sequel Mozilla. Open a bookmark's properties dialog. I
> have never used anything there, but I remember seeing all kinds of
> options there...
We could also discuss Internet Explorers "channels" and CDF, using an
early version of XML to provide something like RSS, but I tried to
ignore it back then and would rather let someone else explore those
memories now.
--
Steven E. Harris
"Steven E. Harris" <···@panix.com> wrote in
···················@torus.sehlabs.com:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
>
>> I am saying, RSS is a particularly interesting social nexus for
>> marketing and community formation.
>
> I can't speak to that because I'm not quite sure what you mean. Can
> you elaborate? It does sound interesting.
What I mean is, I'm gonna take over the Seattle metro area on behalf of
SeaFunc http://groups.yahoo.com/group using blog technology. There's more
to the internet than Usenet. I just didn't previously realize there was a
semi-convenient means of accessing that huge web of stuff out there. I've
been guilty of Usenet parochialism; if it ain't broke, why fix it? Yet my
friends tell me there's a whole generation of people out there that are
using blogs for everything and don't do Usenet at all. In fact, among the
non-techie, they have never even heard of it. This is a sea change that
has probably only occurred within the past 5 years, or I think I would have
heard about it before.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> What I mean is, I'm gonna take over the Seattle metro area on behalf of
> SeaFunc http://groups.yahoo.com/group using blog technology. There's more
> to the internet than Usenet. I just didn't previously realize there was a
> semi-convenient means of accessing that huge web of stuff out there. I've
> been guilty of Usenet parochialism; if it ain't broke, why fix it? Yet my
> friends tell me there's a whole generation of people out there that are
> using blogs for everything and don't do Usenet at all.
That's the beauty. ;) We hope 99% of trolls don't make it here.
They converse on web message boards with tons of animated
smilies and blinking pictures.
About blogs: I don't see the relation to usenet really (and I like
blogs, if their content is good). I would use NNTP instead of RSS
for announcing updates to a blog, though. That technology
wouldn't be visible to the user (with the right tool), it would
just be the mechanism behind it.
> In fact, among the
> non-techie, they have never even heard of it. This is a sea change that
> has probably only occurred within the past 5 years, or I think I would have
> heard about it before.
Even five years ago nobody seemed to ever use usenet. Except: In
my dorm we use it for discussion, because the admin runs a nifty
old NetBSD on the server with an NNTP on it, but in the future he
might add a HTTP frontend for that too, so people don't have to
deal with Thunderbird/Outlook.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote in
····················@individual.net:
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>> What I mean is, I'm gonna take over the Seattle metro area on behalf
>> of SeaFunc http://groups.yahoo.com/group using blog technology.
>> There's more to the internet than Usenet. I just didn't previously
>> realize there was a semi-convenient means of accessing that huge web
>> of stuff out there. I've been guilty of Usenet parochialism; if it
>> ain't broke, why fix it? Yet my friends tell me there's a whole
>> generation of people out there that are using blogs for everything
>> and don't do Usenet at all.
>
> That's the beauty. ;) We hope 99% of trolls don't make it here.
> They converse on web message boards with tons of animated
> smilies and blinking pictures.
It's too bad you have this attitude. Lisp needs all the help it can get
for its growth.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>>>What I mean is, I'm gonna take over the Seattle metro area on behalf
>>>of SeaFunc http://groups.yahoo.com/group using blog technology.
>>>There's more to the internet than Usenet. I just didn't previously
>>>realize there was a semi-convenient means of accessing that huge web
>>>of stuff out there. I've been guilty of Usenet parochialism; if it
>>>ain't broke, why fix it? Yet my friends tell me there's a whole
>>>generation of people out there that are using blogs for everything
>>>and don't do Usenet at all.
>>
>>That's the beauty. ;) We hope 99% of trolls don't make it here.
>> They converse on web message boards with tons of animated
>>smilies and blinking pictures.
>
>
> It's too bad you have this attitude. Lisp needs all the help it can get
> for its growth.
Lisp has quite good WWW exposure IMHO. I think the people who
look also find their way to Google groups' c.l.l; if they care to
learn about usenet, they even come here directly.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote in
····················@individual.net:
>>>
>>>That's the beauty. ;) We hope 99% of trolls don't make it here.
>>> They converse on web message boards with tons of animated
>>>smilies and blinking pictures.
>>
>>
>> It's too bad you have this attitude. Lisp needs all the help it can
>> get for its growth.
>
> Lisp has quite good WWW exposure IMHO. I think the people who
> look also find their way to Google groups' c.l.l; if they care to
> learn about usenet, they even come here directly.
But as per previous posts of mine, Lisp has abysmal exposure in
bookstores. I just wouldn't take an attitude of "we don' need no
steenkin' customers." Sometimes elitism is groundless, like when one
criticizes other people's cultural practices simply because they are
different.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> Well, at SeaFunc last night http://groups.yahoo.com/group/SeaFunc other
> people were rather bullish about RSS.
As everybody is these days. Java and XML also do fine.
> It allows people to 'pull' from
> blogs everywhere.
So does NNTP, if there were more news servers. Why not run your
own? Not everything has to be done via "official" comp.lang style
groups. DragonflyBSD have their discussions on NNTP, which is
IMHO much nicer than those clicky/color/blinky PHP-BB boards
everywhere.
> This allows a complete decentralization of Internet
> communication. It is possible to monitor and score many Blog articles
> without having to manually initiate an interaction with the site.
Ok, so you enter the RSS link once; just so you could enter a news
link.
Instead of having your newsaggregator fetching RSS, your
nntp-aggregator can check all news links.
What do you get? Headlines and an article description (with a
link to the real article) typically. NNTP gives you: a headline,
and some text. See below for more.
> [...]
> You might say, bah, they should have used news servers. That would be
> dumb, as they only offer plain text output. Anyone who thinks plain
> text is the only valid means of Internet communication is stuck in a
> pre-web mindset. Newsgroups just ain't the way most of the internet
> business gets done nowadays.
So what's wrong with text? Scheme is text, Java is text, HTML is
text! Just transport a HTML page with some text and an article
link, just like RSS does. It's not the technology that's limited,
it's people's minds! Just because in traditional usenet and email
HTML is considered rude, doesn't mean you can't transport HTML
feeds via NNTP.
Oh, the final advantage. Go on vacation for three days. Come
back. All your RSS feeds carry the newest articles from today.
All your email accounts and news servers carry the headlines from
the LAST THREE DAYS. Which one is more convenient to catch up on?
Like browsing all those websites for the last three days'
articles? I don't.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote in
····················@individual.net:
>
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>
>> [...]
>> You might say, bah, they should have used news servers. That would
>> be dumb, as they only offer plain text output. Anyone who thinks
>> plain text is the only valid means of Internet communication is stuck
>> in a pre-web mindset. Newsgroups just ain't the way most of the
>> internet business gets done nowadays.
>
> So what's wrong with text? Scheme is text, Java is text, HTML is
> text! Just transport a HTML page with some text and an article
> link, just like RSS does. It's not the technology that's limited,
> it's people's minds! Just because in traditional usenet and email
> HTML is considered rude, doesn't mean you can't transport HTML
> feeds via NNTP.
Yes, but if NNTP hasn't actually been adapted to produce HTML or XML, or
hasn't actually been deployed to large numbers of people in this
capacity, it is irrelevant. A protocol is not 'superior' if it can't
win mindshare. I don't know the history of RSS development vs. NNTP
development. The reality is RSS does a certain job *nowadays* and NNTP
apparently doesn't.
Techies usually pay attention only to the technical dimensions of
software success. Like, this protocol is technically superior to that
protocol. Suits also look at the marketing dimensions and the team
composition dimensions. What good is a technology if the project lead
is an asshole that won't let anyone check useful stuff into the source
pool? Open Source software is never having to say you're sorry; that's
what 'free' as in 'free speech' really means. But when one strikes out
on one's own, one has to consider the marketing and organizational
infrastructure that one is leaving behind. Sometimes one is leaving
absolutely nothing behind; in fact, one may be removing an albatross
around one's neck.
There's a big difference between NIH and blowing off a technology that
doesn't / won't ever share your organizational goals.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> Yes, but if NNTP hasn't actually been adapted to produce HTML or XML, or
> hasn't actually been deployed to large numbers of people in this
> capacity, it is irrelevant. A protocol is not 'superior' if it can't
> win mindshare. I don't know the history of RSS development vs. NNTP
> development. The reality is RSS does a certain job *nowadays* and NNTP
> apparently doesn't.
Is that the fault of the NNTP technology, or of people who don't
even *know* or care about ways things used to be done in days
where computers had less than 32MB RAM and 50MHz (well, my first
PC was a P3-450 w/ 64MB, but still). It's people who jump on
every cool new bandwagon, because they think it's all
groundbreaking (everybody knows that all closed source sucks and
all open-source is a revolution in software quality, made by far
superior coders) and because XML and Java and all that is cool
stuff that gets you jobs.
> Techies usually pay attention only to the technical dimensions of
> software success. Like, this protocol is technically superior to that
> protocol. Suits also look at the marketing dimensions and the team
> composition dimensions. What good is a technology if the project lead
> is an asshole that won't let anyone check useful stuff into the source
> pool? Open Source software is never having to say you're sorry; that's
> what 'free' as in 'free speech' really means. But when one strikes out
> on one's own, one has to consider the marketing and organizational
> infrastructure that one is leaving behind. Sometimes one is leaving
> absolutely nothing behind; in fact, one may be removing an albatross
> around one's neck.
Obviously nobody paid attention to prior art before developing
RSS. Obviously blogs and PHP-BB boards were so hip that its users
don't even know usenet anymore. Weird, when I started learning
about Unix and IT in '99, I read about all that stuff, but maybe
reading and learning is overrated these days. Just reinvent the
wheel with lots of colors, who cares if the friction is higher?
It wasn't about marketing, it was about people not knowing about
"old" tech.
> There's a big difference between NIH and blowing off a technology that
> doesn't / won't ever share your organizational goals.
What would RSS's organizational goals be in contrast to NNTP's?
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote in
····················@individual.net:
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>> Yes, but if NNTP hasn't actually been adapted to produce HTML or XML,
>> or hasn't actually been deployed to large numbers of people in this
>> capacity, it is irrelevant. A protocol is not 'superior' if it can't
>> win mindshare. I don't know the history of RSS development vs. NNTP
>> development. The reality is RSS does a certain job *nowadays* and
>> NNTP apparently doesn't.
>
> Is that the fault of the NNTP technology, or of people who don't
> even *know* or care about ways things used to be done in days
> where computers had less than 32MB RAM and 50MHz (well, my first
> PC was a P3-450 w/ 64MB, but still). It's people who jump on
> every cool new bandwagon, because they think it's all
> groundbreaking (everybody knows that all closed source sucks and
> all open-source is a revolution in software quality, made by far
> superior coders) and because XML and Java and all that is cool
> stuff that gets you jobs.
It is the fault of the NNTP technology. Clearly, they did nothing
proactive to condition the universe to get their technology accepted for
web feeds, instead of someone else's NIH project. People like myself
who are slightly more 'suit oriented' make this criticism of pure techie
communities all the time. The evidence of what marketing organizations
like Microsoft can do to the world is obvious, yet techies eschew the
use of marketing as a tool to advance better technologies. The endgame
is predictable: something that works better doesn't get used because
techies are too introverted to bother getting the word out. Techies who
spend their time on "it's not what you know, it's who you know" are the
ones who actually win the standards wars.
Sometimes there really are problem domains where technical merit wins
out, but those are rare. Also, once there's enough $$$$$$ in something,
the dynamics of marketing take over.
>> There's a big difference between NIH and blowing off a technology
>> that doesn't / won't ever share your organizational goals.
>
> What would RSS's organizational goals be in contrast to NNTP's?
Easily delivering blogger web pages, I would presume.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"The pioneer is the one with the arrows in his back."
- anonymous entrepreneur
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
> It is the fault of the NNTP technology. Clearly, they did nothing
> proactive to condition the universe to get their technology accepted for
> web feeds, instead of someone else's NIH project. People like myself
> who are slightly more 'suit oriented' make this criticism of pure techie
> communities all the time. The evidence of what marketing organizations
> like Microsoft can do to the world is obvious, yet techies eschew the
> use of marketing as a tool to advance better technologies. The endgame
> is predictable: something that works better doesn't get used because
> techies are too introverted to bother getting the word out. Techies who
> spend their time on "it's not what you know, it's who you know" are the
> ones who actually win the standards wars.
No, the techies in the know (quite rightly) don't care. We in
c.l.l. (except the people using G00gle for that) and the
developers of DragonflyBSD don't use web boards but NNTP, because
it's convenient.
The techies who blog use RSS for that because they probably never
leave their computer for longer than 10 hours (so missing news
just does not happen) or because there are nice workarounds (like
leaving your computer on and collecting and saving all those new
messages you fetch every 10 minutes).
NNTP is its own protocol, while RSS uses ····@port80, so they
didn't bother with it (although it would be easy to build an
RSS-like tool for NNTP I guess).
I don't *really* care, or I would already have implemented a
news-server + web CMS and advertised it (yes, I like marketing
too; that's my minor), so some bloggers might use that.
The enemy of good is...? Good enough ;)
> Sometimes there really are problem domains where technical merit wins
> out, but those are rare. Also, once there's enough $$$$$$ in something,
> the dynamics of marketing take over.
Exactly. And since there is not much to win with NNTP, nobody
bothers. With RSS you can make money like that website someone
posted here that caches your RSS feeds for you :)
(or is it ad-free? I haven't tried it...)
> Easily delivering blogger web pages, I would presume.
My friend's NNTP easily "delivers" updates to the PHP-BB board (I
have to ask him which tool he uses for that). That would work
just as well for a blog (but maybe the tool doesn't exist for that).
As mentioned, RSS seems to be good enough for bloggers. As part
of the web-design community the people who developed all those
blog platforms probably didn't know much about NNTP or didn't use
it much, so it eluded their attention and they created RSS I guess.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote in
····················@individual.net:
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>> Techies who
>> spend their time on "it's not what you know, it's who you know" are
>> the ones who actually win the standards wars.
>
> No, the techies in the know (quite rightly) don't care.
By deduction, that would indicate you're not in the know? Because
clearly you do care that RSS has superseded NNTP for the webpage
subscription task.
> I don't *really* care, or I would already have implemented a
> news-server + web CMS and advertised it (yes, I like marketing
> too; that's my minor), so some bloggers might use that.
Which would be my point. NNTP techies decide they don't care. RSS guys
come along and reinvent the wheel, only by the time they get done, it's
a more appropriate wheel to the task. NNTP techies wonder why the world
doesn't pay attention to them. The answer is simple: they didn't care
to steward their technology in the face of change.
> As mentioned, RSS seems to be good enough for bloggers. As part
> of the web-design community the people who developed all those
> blog platforms probably didn't know much about NNTP or didn't use
> it much, so it eluded their attention and they created RSS I guess.
Have you considered that maybe they found it a bitch to adapt to the
task? For reasons of codebase or project leadership? It's all very
fine and well to say "gee, people should have used our stuff," but quite
often people are apathetic to other people's problems.
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.
Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>>No, the techies in the know (quite rightly) don't care.
>
>
> By deduction, that would indicate you're not in the know? Because
> clearly you do care that RSS has superseded NNTP for the webpage
> subscription task.
Not enough, as seen below ;)
>>I don't *really* care, or I would already have implemented a
>>news-server + web CMS and advertised it (yes, I like marketing
>>too; that's my minor), so some bloggers might use that.
>
>
> Which would be my point. NNTP techies decide they don't care. RSS guys
> come along and reinvent the wheel, only by the time they get done, it's
> a more appropriate wheel to the task. NNTP techies wonder why the world
> doesn't pay attention to them. The answer is simple: they didn't care
> to steward their technology in the face of change.
I don't wonder. I just think that NNTP would still be more
appropriate and useful, since an RSS feed is static, AFAIK you
can't say "give me all headlines from the last three days."
>>As mentioned, RSS seems to be good enough for bloggers. As part
>>of the web-design community the people who developed all those
>>blog platforms probably didn't know much about NNTP or didn't use
>>it much, so it eluded their attention and they created RSS I guess.
>
>
> Have you considered that maybe they found it a bitch to adapt to the
> task? For reasons of codebase or project leadership? It's all very
> fine and well to say "gee, people should have used our stuff," but quite
> often people are apathetic to other people's problems.
I wouldn't even necessarily reuse a codebase. I don't know but
guess that NNTP is a simple textual protocol like HTTP, FTP and
SMTP, so it wouldn't be too hard to parse and implement.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote in
····················@individual.net:
> Brandon J. Van Every wrote:
>> Techies who
>> spend their time on "it's not what you know, it's who you know" are
>> the ones who actually win the standards wars.
>
> No, the techies in the know (quite rightly) don't care.
By deduction, that would indicate you're not in the know? Because
clearly you do care that RSS has superseded NNTP for the webpage
subscription task.
> I don't *really* care, or I would already have implemented a
> news-server + web CMS and advertised it (yes, I like marketing
> too; that's my minor), so some bloggers might use that.
Which would be my point. NNTP techies decide they don't care. RSS guys
come along and reinvent the wheel, only by the time they get done, it's
a more appropriate wheel to the task. NNTP techies wonder why the world
doesn't pay attention to them. The answer is simple: they didn't care
to steward their technology in the face of change.
> As mentioned, RSS seems to be good enough for bloggers. As part
> of the web-design community the people who developed all those
> blog platforms probably didn't know much about NNTP or didn't use
> it much, so it eluded their attention and they created RSS I guess.
Have you considered that maybe they found it a bitch to adapt to the
task? For reasons of codebase or project leadership? It's all very
fine and well to say "gee, people should have used our stuff," but quite
often people are apathetic to other people's problems.
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
When no one else sells courage, supply and demand take hold.
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> You might say, bah, they should have used news servers. That would be
> dumb, as they only offer plain text output. Anyone who thinks plain
Really? Someone should tell my employers the alt.binaries groups
can't exist, then. I'm sure they'd save a bundle on disks.
-dan
In article <··············@no-rom-basic.office.uk.clara.net>,
Daniel Barlow <···@telent.net> wrote:
> "Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
>
> > You might say, bah, they should have used news servers. That would be
> > dumb, as they only offer plain text output. Anyone who thinks plain
>
> Really? Someone should tell my employers the alt.binaries groups
> can't exist, then. I'm sure they'd save a bundle on disks.
They shouldn't, but they do. They're a kludge that only existed because
there was no other mass distribution mechanism on the Internet 20 years
ago. Now that there's file sharing networks, BitTorrent, personal web
pages, etc. I find it hard to understand why people think Usenet is a
good way to distribute hige binary files. It wastes enormous amounts of
space on thousands of servers, as well as all the bandwidth being used
on the single pipe to each server by all its clients.
--
Barry Margolin, ······@alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
Christopher C. Stacy <······@news.dtpq.com> wrote:
+---------------
| "Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
| > I think many Lisp users are blinded to how hard Emacs is.
...
| > The muscles need time to gain 'muscle memory' or whatever it is.
| > This is not a criticism of Lisp or opensource developers, because
| > this is a development resource problem, but it is a mild criticism
| > of those who advocate Lisp and then make you feel like an idiot if
| > Emacs is painful.
|
| In order to just write Lisp source code, you need an editor that
| can balance parenthesis and indent Lisp code. For example, on Unix,
| "vi" will do this for you (set "sm", "ai" and "lisp").
+---------------
I know some consider me a heretic for saying/doing it, but Emacs
hurts my fingers [too many years of using TECO, maybe]. I've been
coding very happily in Common Lisp for several years with "nvi-1.79"
<http://www.bostic.com/vi/>, which has "sm" & "ai", but not "lisp"
mode [it got dropped at some point as being too buggy]. Seems to
work fine, especially the "%" motion command [go forward/back to
matching bracket].
One hint: Also set "sw=1", then when you put your cursor on a paren
[left or right, either works] and type "<%" [or ">%"] you shift the
entire S-expr left [or right] one space, and by typing additional "."s
you can move further in the same direction.
And "y% and "d%" are useful, too, especially followed by a "p" or "P"
somewhere else. ;-}
-Rob
p.s. From just a quick loop, the "lisp" mode in "Vim" seems to
sort of work. It knows about DEFUN, LET, & COND, at least...
-----
Rob Warnock <····@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue <URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403 (650)572-2607
On 4243 September 1993, Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
> "Tayssir John Gabbour" <···········@yahoo.com> writes:
>> I think many Lisp users are blinded to how hard Emacs is.
> My opinion, from teaching all kinds of people to use Emacs over the
> last 25 years, is that Emacs is not difficult to learn, if you are
> really up for learning something that is different from what you
> expect.
I second that opinion.
Not wanting to turn cll into a platform for yet another editor
flamewar, but ...
> People want to learn their editor by just diving in and using it,
> and they expect that it will obey a universal keyboard and mouse
> command set, that the editor will be mainly mouse-oriented,
> and that all functions will be available from a GUI.
I really can't see how people might come to the (from my point of
view) ridiculous misconception that an editor should be "mainly
mouse-oriented". To me, that's a contradiction in terms.
> Even people who can quickly learn a small basic Emacs command set
> will be quickly frustrated at the lack of GUI support for easily
> doing things like changing fonts and colors and source-comparisons.
In XEmacs, changing fonts and doing source comparisons is just two
clicks away (via the Options and the Tools menu). Performing file
comparisons is available from the Tools menu in Emacs 21, too.
> They are also not liable to want to make customizations by writing
> Emacs-Lisp expressions in an init file.
By now, even vi-users should have heard about the customize-system. ;-)
> XEmacs in particular has tried to make progress in this area.
> Sorry, it's just not anywhere near good enough!
This is certainly true, but the examples you have given are not
convincing at all. BTW, Emacs 21 and later are catching up fast in
this (and other) regards.
We should take this discussion to a different newsgroup, really.
Holger
--
--- http://www.coling.uni-freiburg.de/~schauer/ ---
Fachbegriffe der Informatik - Einfach erkl�rt
104: fork(2)
New processes are created by other processes, just like new humans.
New humans are created by other humans, of course, not by processes.
(Unix System Administration Handbook)
Holger Schauer wrote:
> I really can't see how people might come to the (from my point of
> view) ridiculous misconception that an editor should be "mainly
> mouse-oriented". To me, that's a contradiction in terms.
Have you heard of Sam and Acme for Plan9? I've never tried them,
but read about them, and they are highly mouse-involving (and at
the same time very programmer-oriented).
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
From: Nils M Holm
Subject: Re: Why Lisp instead of Scheme?
Date:
Message-ID: <d3oq8l$7f1$1@online.de>
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote:
> Have you heard of Sam and Acme for Plan9? I've never tried them,
> but read about them, and they are highly mouse-involving (and at
> the same time very programmer-oriented).
Acme is a great editor for programmers and its primary user interface
is indeed the mouse. The productivity I achieve using acme is yet to be
matched by any other editor. YMMV of course.
In case you want to learn more about acme, see
"Acme: A User Interface for Programmers" by Rob Pike
http://plan9.bell-labs.com/sys/doc/acme/acme.html
There is a Unix port of acme called 'wily':
http://www.cs.yorku.ca/~oz/wily/index.html
BTW, I have once patched acme (whose source code is part of the
Plan 9 distribution) to include the surrounding parentheses when
marking regions delimited by parens. Guess why.
Nils
--
Nils M Holm <···@despammed.com> http://www.holm-und-jeschag.de/nils/
Symbolic Computing - an Introduction to Pure LISP: http://www.t3x.org/scipl/
Holger Schauer <··············@gmx.de> writes:
> This is certainly true, but the examples you have given are not
> convincing at all.
Not convinced of what? That I'm telling the truth?
On 4244 September 1993, Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
> Holger Schauer <··············@gmx.de> writes:
>> This is certainly true, but the examples you have given are not
>> convincing at all.
> Not convinced of what? That I'm telling the truth?
No, that the examples are supporting your claims.
Holger, Fup2: poster
--
--- http://www.coling.uni-freiburg.de/~schauer/ ---
Fachbegriffe der Informatik - Einfach erkl�rt
104: fork(2)
New processes are created by other processes, just like new humans.
New humans are created by other humans, of course, not by processes.
(Unix System Administration Handbook)
Holger Schauer <··············@gmx.de> writes:
> On 4244 September 1993, Christopher C. Stacy wrote:
> > Holger Schauer <··············@gmx.de> writes:
> >> This is certainly true, but the examples you have given are not
> >> convincing at all.
>
> > Not convinced of what? That I'm telling the truth?
>
> No, that the examples are supporting your claims.
My claim was that many people have found something to unsatisfactory.
Your divergent opinion on those specifica issues is irrelevent to that.
Holger Schauer <··············@gmx.de> schrieb:
>> People want to learn their editor by just diving in and using it,
>> and they expect that it will obey a universal keyboard and mouse
>> command set, that the editor will be mainly mouse-oriented,
>> and that all functions will be available from a GUI.
>
> I really can't see how people might come to the (from my point of
> view) ridiculous misconception that an editor should be "mainly
> mouse-oriented". To me, that's a contradiction in terms.
Only a few of the operations you do with an editor are inherently
related to inputting letters. For example, moving a piece of text -- no
reason that should be done with the keyboard, and it's usually more
intuitively obvious how to do it with a mouse (especially on Unix where
mouse copy/paste is about the only thing you can assume works in every
application). Anyways, I think the point is more that a mouse- and
menu-oriented interface is an obvious, standard tool for exploration and
learning. Users interested in working efficiently can slowly learn the
hotkeys they see in the menu and eventually mostly avoid the menus.
Texmacs is (to me) a fabulous example of this principle in action:
everything is available from nicely-organized contextual menus AND can
be typed directly from the keyboard (without using a lot of wacky chords
either).
> By now, even vi-users should have heard about the customize-system.
But it's soooooooo ugly.
>> XEmacs in particular has tried to make progress in this area.
>> Sorry, it's just not anywhere near good enough!
I find it disappointing, because as editors go, it's hard to imagine a
general architecture that should meet the goals of learnability,
usability, extensibility, and efficiency better than Emacs. I think it's
simply an issue of:
1. Emacs still living in its own little world of weird conventions
completely divorced from modern computing. Like dynamic scope.
2. Wanting to maintain backwards compatibility over a very long history.
3. User momentum -- who cares if the keybindings are non-intuitive, when
almost everybody that cares has already invested all the work to
learn them?
3. Nobody willing/able to step in and completely redesign things for
better usability.
Adrian Kubala <···········@sixfingeredman.net> writes:
> Holger Schauer <··············@gmx.de> schrieb:
> > I really can't see how people might come to the (from my point of
> > view) ridiculous misconception that an editor should be "mainly
> > mouse-oriented". To me, that's a contradiction in terms.
>
> Only a few of the operations you do with an editor are inherently
> related to inputting letters. For example, moving a piece of text -- no
> reason that should be done with the keyboard, and it's usually more
> intuitively obvious how to do it with a mouse (especially on Unix where
> mouse copy/paste is about the only thing you can assume works in every
> application). Anyways, I think the point is more that a mouse- and
> menu-oriented interface is an obvious, standard tool for exploration and
> learning. Users interested in working efficiently can slowly learn the
> hotkeys they see in the menu and eventually mostly avoid the menus.
While personally anathama to me, that's exactly what I meant.
On 4244 September 1993, Adrian Kubala wrote:
> Holger Schauer <··············@gmx.de> schrieb:
>>> People want to learn their editor by just diving in and using it,
>>> and they expect that it will obey a universal keyboard and mouse
>>> command set, that the editor will be mainly mouse-oriented,
>>> and that all functions will be available from a GUI.
>> I really can't see how people might come to the (from my point of
>> view) ridiculous misconception that an editor should be "mainly
>> mouse-oriented". To me, that's a contradiction in terms.
> Only a few of the operations you do with an editor are inherently
> related to inputting letters. For example, moving a piece of text -- no
> reason that should be done with the keyboard, and it's usually more
> intuitively obvious how to do it with a mouse (especially on Unix where
> mouse copy/paste is about the only thing you can assume works in every
> application).
Delete (which is involved when moving text) is not among this list. Of
course, one expects that this operation is available from the context
menu.
However, I don't buy the argument that only a few operations of an
editor require the keyboard. When using an editor, I mangle text and
most of it requires inputting letters or deleting some. Copying,
moving etc. are also part of it for sure, but why should I switch my
modus operandi when these operations are also readily available from
the keyboard?
> Anyways, I think the point is more that a mouse- and
> menu-oriented interface is an obvious, standard tool for exploration and
> learning. Users interested in working efficiently can slowly learn the
> hotkeys they see in the menu and eventually mostly avoid the menus.
I agree. But this is, at least to me, a quite different thing from a
"mainly mouse-oriented editor". E.g., I would see the kind of editors
that you have in the Smalltalk programming environments as mainly
mouse-oriented, and I don't like them at all, even though they are
unbelievable useful when programming Smalltalk.
This is not to say that being able to use the mouse for some
operations is not a good thing, quite to the contrary. But I really
want all operations to be available from the keyboard and have
mouse-operations as an add-on.
> 2. Wanting to maintain backwards compatibility over a very long history.
I see that as a feature not as a bug.
> 3. User momentum -- who cares if the keybindings are non-intuitive, when
> almost everybody that cares has already invested all the work to
> learn them?
I don't believe in intuitive keybindings, only in keybindings one has
become used to. For me, many of the keybindings of Emacs are used in
other applications I use as well (bash, Firefox as well as several
others. Heck, even Eclipse has Emacs keybindings as an option).
> 3. Nobody willing/able to step in and completely redesign things for
> better usability.
Well, it's free software. Probably nobody feels enough pain to do
that.
Holger
--
--- http://www.coling.uni-freiburg.de/~schauer/ ---
Fachbegriffe der Informatik - Einfach erkl�rt
6: Globale Variable
Parameter�bergabemechanismus in 4GLs (Marit K�hntopp)
Holger Schauer <··············@gmx.de> schrieb:
>> 3. User momentum -- who cares if the keybindings are non-intuitive, when
>> almost everybody that cares has already invested all the work to
>> learn them?
>
> I don't believe in intuitive keybindings, only in keybindings one has
> become used to.
Intuitive means that you can "discover" new commands without having been
taught them, just by extrapolating consistent conventions. This makes
keybindings easier to learn and also easier to recall. Emacs isn't
*that* bad, I guess ... there were only a few bindings I thought were
really wacky but it's been too long for me to remember them.
> For me, many of the keybindings of Emacs are used in other
> applications I use as well (bash, Firefox as well as several others.
> Heck, even Eclipse has Emacs keybindings as an option).
"Many" of the keybindings of Emacs are used in Firefox? I thought there
might be one or two, but now in fact I can't think of a single
non-trivial one. Does Eclipse really have the same mark/kill/yank
bindings as Emacs or does "Emacs keybindings" just mean Ctrl-A and
Ctrl-E?
Adrian Kubala <···········@sixfingeredman.net> wrote:
>"Many" of the keybindings of Emacs are used in Firefox? I thought there
>might be one or two, but now in fact I can't think of a single
>non-trivial one. Does Eclipse really have the same mark/kill/yank
>bindings as Emacs or does "Emacs keybindings" just mean Ctrl-A and
>Ctrl-E?
C-a/C-e doesn't seem to work even (I think it did work in earlier
Netscapes, though), in text fields, C-a selects the entire text,
Windows-style. I'm somewhat amazed, though, that / does a forward
search in web pages, like vi (or other tools like less(1), etc.)
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to do regular expressions but that
would've been too much to ask ;-).
mkb.
Paul wrote:
>> C-a/C-e doesn't seem to work even (I think it did work in earlier
>> Netscapes, though), in text fields, C-a selects the entire text,
>You can fix that. Just put
> gtk-key-theme-name = "Emacs"
>in ~/.gtkrc-2.0
Aha, yes, that works... however I'm not so sure if it's really
helpful since I found that it's better to use those Windows-style
GUI programs with the keybindings that they come with natively.
Once the mind is tricked into thinking that "traditional" keybindings
work, you often type something only to find it has a completely
different meaning. For example, I often use ^W (conventional for
backwards word-erase, practically anywhere on Unix) but with many
Windows-style GUI programs, that closes the current window! Happens
to me every now and then when typing messages in Gaim, for example.
mkb.
>>>>> "israel" == israel <······@bigpond.net.au> writes:
[...]
israel> That translates to around 200 Indian Rupees / hour ie:
israel> 32,000 Rupees / month for a 40 hour week.
israel> Indians ( and perhaps ukrainians ) would undercut that by
israel> a factor of 3 and still make a profit.
Actually, that doesn't seem to be the case:
http://www.payscale.com/salary-survey/vid-18643/fid-11570
I don't know what the hidden payroll tax amount to add is for India,
if any. (ie. 'employer share' of stuff which should be about 8-9% in
the US now.)
Maybe I am missing something?
cheers,
BM
On 4247 September 1993, Adrian Kubala wrote:
> Holger Schauer <··············@gmx.de> schrieb:
>> For me, many of the keybindings of Emacs are used in other
>> applications I use as well (bash, Firefox as well as several others.
>> Heck, even Eclipse has Emacs keybindings as an option).
> "Many" of the keybindings of Emacs are used in Firefox?
No, of course not. "Many" is certainly an exaggeration, but at least
in readline based applications, the basic editing facilities are
available (which includes yanking and undo). In bash, also
search is available and bound to the same keys as in Emacs.
> I thought there might be one or two, but now in fact I can't think
> of a single non-trivial one. Does Eclipse really have the same
> mark/kill/yank bindings as Emacs or does "Emacs keybindings" just
> mean Ctrl-A and Ctrl-E?
No, Firefox doesn't have the same mark/kill/ring bindings, C-f, C-b,
C-a, C-e and C-d, M-d, C-k are functional, as far as I can tell. C-y
(yank) seems to be missing, C-w seems to behave as in readline,
i.e. unix-word-rubout.
Holger, Fup2: poster, again
--
--- http://www.coling.uni-freiburg.de/~schauer/ ---
Fachbegriffe der Informatik - Einfach erkl�rt
66: WWW
in bunten Bildern wenig Klarheit, viel Irrtum und ein F�nkchen
Wahrheit (Johann Wolfgang v. Goethe)
Well, I also asked myself the same question. My conclusions so far(I'm
not an expert):
I think Scheme is the better choice, here is why:
* Scheme macros are much easier than Lisp macros. When I say easier I
mean, it's much easier to write a macro in Scheme than to write the
same macro in Lisp. Both macro systems are equally powerful, but doing
a complex macro in Lisp can be very UNREADABLE, while in Scheme even
complex macros can be easier to read because of the way the macro
system works. I think in this area Scheme wins easily, and Lisp needs
to progress. Do a google search on this topic.
* Small, lots of implementations.
* There are implementations that work well with Java for example, so
you can leverage all the Java libraries. There are all kind of
implementations that work with all kind of systems.
Advantages of Lisp:
* CLOS
* Is bigger, more functions and stuff included.
Again, I think one of the big pluses of Scheme is it's macro system.
Hope this helps.
TheLifter
thelifter wrote:
> Well, I also asked myself the same question. My conclusions so far(I'm
> not an expert):
>
> I think Scheme is the better choice, here is why:
>
> * Scheme macros are much easier than Lisp macros. When I say easier I
> mean, it's much easier to write a macro in Scheme than to write the
> same macro in Lisp. Both macro systems are equally powerful, but doing
> a complex macro in Lisp can be very UNREADABLE, while in Scheme even
> complex macros can be easier to read because of the way the macro
> system works. I think in this area Scheme wins easily, and Lisp needs
> to progress. Do a google search on this topic.
I disagree. Scheme macros are one of my main motivations for
trying Lisp. They are way to complicated, it's hard to impossible
to just calculate stuff at compile-time. In Lisp you can have a
function that takes a yacc-spec and produces a parse function and
declare that as a defmacro. In Scheme you are forced to use that
pattern-matching stuff. The Swine Before Perl has nice macros for
finite automata, but I'm not sure if I could come up with
something like that. Lisp macros are much simpler and more
intuitive IMHO.
> * Small, lots of implementations.
Small is good, but then most useful features are non-standard and
vary among implementations. Even structs!
> * There are implementations that work well with Java for example, so
> you can leverage all the Java libraries. There are all kind of
> implementations that work with all kind of systems.
I'd rather not use Java at all when I don't have to. And when I
have to, Scheme is out of the question, usually.
> Advantages of Lisp:
>
> * CLOS
> * Is bigger, more functions and stuff included.
Yes. I hope I'll be able to do useful stuff with it.
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann wrote:
> thelifter wrote:
>
>> Well, I also asked myself the same question. My conclusions so far(I'm
>> not an expert):
>>
>> I think Scheme is the better choice, here is why:
>>
>> * Scheme macros are much easier than Lisp macros. When I say easier I
>> mean, it's much easier to write a macro in Scheme than to write the
>> same macro in Lisp.
> I disagree. Scheme macros are one of my main motivations for trying
> Lisp. They are way to complicated, it's hard to impossible to just
> calculate stuff at compile-time.
It doesn't make much sense to talk about "Scheme macros". There
are several macro systems in use:
- syntax-rules
- syntax-case (Portable and PLT)
- defmacro
- syntactic closures
- explicit renaming
The current R5RS choice is syntax-rules macros, but (almost) everybody
expect this to be changed/extended in R6RS.
In one of the above systems it is hard to "calculate stuff at compile-time".
--
Jens Axel Søgaard
Jens Axel S�gaard wrote:
> It doesn't make much sense to talk about "Scheme macros". There
> are several macro systems in use:
That only makes it worse, IMHO.
> - syntax-rules
> - syntax-case (Portable and PLT)
> - defmacro
> - syntactic closures
> - explicit renaming
>
> The current R5RS choice is syntax-rules macros, but (almost) everybody
> expect this to be changed/extended in R6RS.
That's why I talked about syntax-rules. Syntax-case and closures
might allow compile-time, not sure.
> In one of the above systems it is hard to "calculate stuff at
> compile-time".
Syntax-rules. Well, actually someone has a nice article online
how to do CPS in syntax-rules, but that's a little to weird for
me. I don't like emulating low-level stuff on high-level
abstractions, just because they didn't want to put up with a
low-level macro system without those restrictions.
I'd rather have a system that allows me to make mistakes than one
that doesn't even allow me to code intuitively ;)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:40:08 -0500, Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote:
> That's why I talked about syntax-rules.
No, you talked about "Scheme macros."
--
Lisp is not dead, it just smells funny.
Real email: (replace (subseq ·········@agharta.de" 5) "edi")
Edi Weitz wrote:
> On Thu, 14 Apr 2005 09:40:08 -0500, Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> wrote:
>
>
>>That's why I talked about syntax-rules.
>
>
> No, you talked about "Scheme macros."
>
Well, I meant the R5RS standard ones. I thought that would be
obvious, since the 1000s of other systems are non-standard ;)
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
Ulrich Hobelmann <···········@web.de> writes:
> Jens Axel S�gaard wrote:
> > It doesn't make much sense to talk about "Scheme macros". There
> > are several macro systems in use:
>
> That only makes it worse, IMHO.
>
> > - syntax-rules
> > - syntax-case (Portable and PLT)
> > - defmacro
> > - syntactic closures
> > - explicit renaming
> >
> > The current R5RS choice is syntax-rules macros, but (almost) everybody
> > expect this to be changed/extended in R6RS.
>
> That's why I talked about syntax-rules. Syntax-case and closures
> might allow compile-time, not sure.
Syntactic-closure macros are very similar to defmacro macros, but with
the ability to write things like:
(defmacro cons-dwim (lhs rhs @rest more)
(if more
`(list ,lhs ,rhs ,@more)
`(cons ,lhs ,rhs)))
(defun foo (x y z)
(let ((list (list x y z)))
(cons-dwim list x y z)))
You get to construct s-expressions, but you can say "close this over
the environment of the defmacro form". I wish we had them in the
Lisp-1 I use at work :-)
·········@gmx.net (thelifter) wrote on 13 Apr 2005 20:4:
> I think Scheme is the better choice, here is why:
> * Scheme macros are much easier than Lisp macros. When I say easier I
> mean, it's much easier to write a macro in Scheme than to write the
> same macro in Lisp. Both macro systems are equally powerful, but doing
> a complex macro in Lisp can be very UNREADABLE, while in Scheme even
> complex macros can be easier to read because of the way the macro
> system works. I think in this area Scheme wins easily, and Lisp needs
> to progress.
Can you be more specific? Is this merely a personal preference that you
have, that you personally feel more comfortable writing Scheme macros, and
perhaps you're not as familiar with Lisp macros?
Or are you trying to say something objective, that you believe _every_
programmer would find Scheme macros clearer?
Because that certainly doesn't seem to be a widely shared impression. Perhaps
you could help us with some examples. Can you write a couple of macro examples
in both Scheme and Lisp to show how much easier the Scheme one is?
Also, perhaps you could give more detail about your abstract claim that
Scheme macros are easier to read "because of the way the macro system works".
What (in your opinion) is the difference in how they work, and how does that
make Scheme macros easier to read?
You made some very strong (and controversial) claims, with nothing (so far)
to back them up. I'd be interested in hearing more detail.
-- Don
_______________________________________________________________________________
Don Geddis http://don.geddis.org/ ···@geddis.org
Master: Who disturbs our meditation, as a pebble disturbs the stillness of a
pond? Student: Me. Ed Gruberman. -- "Boot to the Head", The Frantics
Don Geddis <···@geddis.org> wrote in message news:<··············@sidious.geddis.org>...
> Can you be more specific? Is this merely a personal preference that you
> have, that you personally feel more comfortable writing Scheme macros, and
> perhaps you're not as familiar with Lisp macros?
Well, I'm not an expert but I came to this conclusion in a time when I
compared both systems. There is a lot of information here on usenet,
please do a search, some of it may be even in my own old postings.
Why I think scheme macros are better in short words:
The way scheme macros work you can immediately see how the substituted
expression will look after macro expansion. This is because there is
no need for complicated backquote/comma expressions. You just see the
patterns.
I remember there was a good example of this in one posting from
usenet, but I can't find it now.
TheLifter
thelifter wrote:
> Why I think scheme macros are better in short words:
>
> The way scheme macros work you can immediately see how the substituted
> expression will look after macro expansion. This is because there is
> no need for complicated backquote/comma expressions. You just see the
> patterns.
Sure, that's nice. But what if you don't know at macro-write time
what the expansion will look like, because it's more than just a
shortcut? If the macro builds a different program depending on
how it's called, imagine something like yacc, which transforms a
grammar into a parser.
It's a tradeoff. Maybe it would be best if Scheme had both a
high-level and a low-level macro system (standardized).
--
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's
consent. -- Abraham Lincoln
·········@gmx.net (thelifter) writes:
> The way scheme macros work you can immediately see how the substituted
> expression will look after macro expansion. This is because there is
> no need for complicated backquote/comma expressions. You just see the
> patterns.
This implies that Scheme macros are less powerful than Lisp macros.
In Lisp, a macro can expand into arbitrarily complex code. As far as
backquote and comma expressions go, they are there to provide a visual
template. It's true that nesting can make things more complex. But
the backquotes and commas require less work to read and write than
building up the Lisp forms in code.
perhaps I misunderstand you regarding Scheme macros.
--
An ideal world is left as an excercise to the reader.
--- Paul Graham, On Lisp 8.1
No excuses. No apologies. Just do it.
--- Erik Naggum
David Steuber wrote:
> Why Lisp instead of Scheme?
My opinion is that neither CL, nor Scheme are superior to the other.
Scheme's biggest problem is its many implementations. If there was one very
good implementation that everyone was using, and every library was
compatible with, I'd use Scheme.
Your friend, being a practical money-minded Java guy would probably be
better off with Scheme. There is the SISC Scheme implementation for the
Java platform. This makes Scheme an alternative to Jython, JRuby,
Groovy, BeanShell etc that Java developers can be seen to use
occasionally. Some benefit from Scheme for a Java guy might be a
continuation based web framework. One was recently announced on the sisc
list iirc. However, I wouldn't start there - rich fat clients are more
popular nowdays anyways... and you can barely sell skills in anything
other than Struts :-). Another application of Scheme for a Java guy
might be to implement a "rules engine". Many times that people think
they need a rules engine, they only need a scripting language anyways.
However, when using Scheme, you can find interesting libraries of code
that implement such things (such as Schelog). I don't know about forward
chaining engines though. There is also untapped potential to use
techniques from the continuation based web frameworks instead for
business process automation. Apparently SISC has good support for
serialisable continuations which is used for this kind of thing.
OTOH there is Armed Bear Common Lisp (ABCL) - a CL implementation for
the Java platform. The license was recently changed such that a
professional Java developer may be able to use it - ianal.
The professional Java developer is unlikely to find the native code
generating Common Lisp implementations of (professional) interest.
Particularly freelance developers don't have a choice of platform (which
is usually Java or .NET these days).
Cheers,
Steve.
Steven Shaw wrote:
> The professional Java developer is unlikely to find the native code
> generating Common Lisp implementations of (professional) interest.
> Particularly freelance developers don't have a choice of platform
> (which is usually Java or .NET these days).
>
I would note that Bigloo Scheme has C, Java, and C# back-ends.
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
"We live in a world of very bright people building
crappy software with total shit for tools and process."
- Ed McKenzie
"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
> Steven Shaw wrote:
>
>> The professional Java developer is unlikely to find the native code
>> generating Common Lisp implementations of (professional)
>> interest. Particularly freelance developers don't have a choice of
>> platform (which is usually Java or .NET these days).
>>
> I would note that Bigloo Scheme has C, Java, and C# back-ends.
That's nice. Could you do so in comp.lang.scheme, where it stands a
chance of being vaguely on-topic?
Christophe
Christophe Rhodes wrote:
>"Brandon J. Van Every" <·····················@mycompanyname.com> writes:
>
>>I would note that Bigloo Scheme has C, Java, and C# back-ends.
>>
>>
>
>That's nice. Could you do so in comp.lang.scheme, where it stands a
>chance of being vaguely on-topic?
>
>
>
Read the thread title. Or has this become Christophe's personal
newsgroup to get cranky about whatever he feels like?
--
Cheers, www.indiegamedesign.com
Brandon Van Every Seattle, WA
Brandon's Law (after Godwin's Law):
"As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of
a person being called a troll approaches one RAPIDLY."