I found this on a blog earlier today, which does not seem to exist any
more, but I had saved a copy. The text was unsigned, and there were
no indications about time or location:
Something horrible happened... Late at night, I was attacked in the
street by three people wearing ski-masks; the one who seemed to be
in charge had on his lapel a little violet badge with a black circle
in the middle in which the Greek small letter lambda was written in
white in a rather curvy font face. They threatened me in terms I
dare not repeat (suffice it to say that cutting off my mouse cable
was mentioned) if I ever inserted an operator symbol in between two
operands, or failed to surround an expression in parentheses. I
managed to calm them down a little by quoting verbatim the
requirements for implementing ARITHMETIC-IF as a macro, but they
only let me go after I told them the non-destructive equivalent of
NRECONC as well. Then they bid me to not breathe a word about this
matter to anyone; as they disappeared in the night, I saw that the
backs of their jackets bore, in large block letters, "LISPERS.ORG".
I am writing an account of this incident in green ink on a Hollerith
card and placing it at the beginning of Chapter 20 of my copy of CLtL,
just in case.
---Vassil,
a most sincere flatterer...
--
The truly good code is the obviously correct code.