From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <47a977e3$0$15201$607ed4bc@cv.net>
Get it?*:

 
http://beautifulcode.oreillynet.com/2008/02/arc_an_unappreciated_approach_1.php

That is favorable coverage of Lisp by a company that made a preemptive 
strike against Lisp content.

Wow, first the Giants, now this. I guess next Anna Kournikova asks she 
can come over to talk about her breakup with Julio.

kenny


-- 
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"In the morning, hear the Way;
  in the evening, die content!"
                     -- Confucius

From: Slobodan Blazeski
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <f116b33d-e773-438e-abb7-3c1b7a0b3033@q77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 10:03 am, Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
> I guess next Anna Kournikova asks she
> can come over to talk about her breakup with Julio.

Could we substitute Kournikova with Beatriz Barros. I'm not much of a
tennis fan (*).
http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/8136/
http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/3142/
http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/3121/

Slobodan

P.S.
Beside she done poor job implmenting green thread for CMUCL, now
weblocks is incompatible with it.
From: Dimiter "malkia" Stanev
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <60ual8F1t030qU1@mid.individual.net>
Slobodan Blazeski wrote:
> On Feb 6, 10:03 am, Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
>> I guess next Anna Kournikova asks she
>> can come over to talk about her breakup with Julio.
> 
> Could we substitute Kournikova with Beatriz Barros. I'm not much of a
> tennis fan (*).
> http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/8136/
> http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/3142/
> http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/3121/
> 
> Slobodan
> 
> P.S.
> Beside she done poor job implmenting green thread for CMUCL, now
> weblocks is incompatible with it.

She's too schemish (I mean schematic... skinny), and I like something 
more common (more love handles, more brains, etc.). But I already have 
it, so no bueno :)

Well nowadays, eastern europe is full of walking beauty contest 
skeletons. Jeesssus!
From: Slobodan Blazeski
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <b50d9a0e-bbac-4c2d-ad96-9d550c9a0b19@s37g2000prg.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 6:55 pm, "Dimiter \"malkia\" Stanev" <······@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Slobodan Blazeski wrote:
> > On Feb 6, 10:03 am, Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
> >> I guess next Anna Kournikova asks she
> >> can come over to talk about her breakup with Julio.
>
> > Could we substitute Kournikova with Beatriz Barros. I'm not much of a
> > tennis fan (*).
> >http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/8136/
> >http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/3142/
> >http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/3121/
>
> > Slobodan
>
> > P.S.
> > Beside she done poor job implmenting green thread for CMUCL, now
> > weblocks is incompatible with it.
>
> She's too schemish (I mean schematic... skinny), and I like something
> more common

Is that so.Tnan so lone commoners I'm switching to Scheme.

Slobodan
P.S.
Don't  bother to reply I'm unsubscribing from this newsgroup.
From: gavino
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <f35072f1-7686-413b-af9b-58488f0fb28d@c4g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 9:55 am, "Dimiter \"malkia\" Stanev" <······@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Slobodan Blazeski wrote:
> > On Feb 6, 10:03 am, Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
> >> I guess next Anna Kournikova asks she
> >> can come over to talk about her breakup with Julio.
>
> > Could we substitute Kournikova with Beatriz Barros. I'm not much of a
> > tennis fan (*).
> >http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/8136/
> >http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/3142/
> >http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/3121/
>
> > Slobodan
>
> > P.S.
> > Beside she done poor job implmenting green thread for CMUCL, now
> > weblocks is incompatible with it.
>
> She's too schemish (I mean schematic... skinny), and I like something
> more common (more love handles, more brains, etc.). But I already have
> it, so no bueno :)
>
> Well nowadays, eastern europe is full of walking beauty contest
> skeletons. Jeesssus!


yaeh skinny chix are gross
I love anna nicole smith types
From: gavino
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <66aa6099-6a94-4ea5-9921-74d0ea5ba213@d70g2000hsb.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 6:15 am, Slobodan Blazeski <·················@gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Feb 6, 10:03 am, Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> > I guess next Anna Kournikova asks she
> > can come over to talk about her breakup with Julio.
>
> Could we substitute Kournikova with Beatriz Barros. I'm not much of a
> tennis fan (*).http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/8136/http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/3142/http://anabeatrizbarrosfan.com/gallery/full/3121/
>
> Slobodan
>
> P.S.
> Beside she done poor job implmenting green thread for CMUCL, now
> weblocks is incompatible with it.
no she is too skinny
From: Didier Verna
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <mux7ihi88dz.fsf@uzeb.lrde.epita.fr>
Slobodan Blazeski <·················@gmail.com> wrote:

> Could we substitute Kournikova with Beatriz Barros.

  Who's that ? There's only our president's new wife in my life now.

-- 
Resistance is futile. You will be jazzimilated.

Didier Verna, ······@lrde.epita.fr, http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~didier

EPITA / LRDE, 14-16 rue Voltaire   Tel.+33 (0)1 44 08 01 85
94276 Le Kremlin-Bic�tre, France   Fax.+33 (0)1 53 14 59 22  ······@xemacs.org
From: Slobodan Blazeski
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <79ec2ecc-40c2-49f2-8e2d-d1527c1cb0f7@y5g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 3:30 pm, Didier Verna <······@lrde.epita.fr> wrote:
> Slobodan Blazeski <·················@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Could we substitute Kournikova with Beatriz Barros.
>
>   Who's that ?
The only one that could make me give up on lisp. Well beside death,
but that's unproven.
> There's only our president's new wife in my life now.
You're Bruni's lover ?!! Lucky bastard.

cheers
Slobdoan
From: Rainer Joswig
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <joswig-D34AD6.10450306022008@news-europe.giganews.com>
In article <·························@cv.net>,
 Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:

> Get it?*:
> 
>  
> http://beautifulcode.oreillynet.com/2008/02/arc_an_unappreciated_approach_1.php

Kenny, that's just a Blogger on one of their web sites.
Do you actually care about O'Reilly? The last book I bought
from them turned out to be a big mistake.

Plus his post is full of errors. Example: The store was not written top
to bottom in Lisp:

 "Viaweb at first had two parts: the editor, written in Lisp,
  which people used to build their sites, and the ordering system,
  written in C, which handled orders. The first version was
  mostly Lisp, because the ordering system was small.
  Later we added two more modules, an image generator written
  in C, and a back-office manager written mostly in Perl."

Then the blog post:

  'It is, instead, a very clean deliberately designed, close to the roots Lisp.'

Haha! ROTFL!

  'I don't know enough Lisp to be able to judge his efforts.'

But enough to write the sentence above? It is about of the same level
as 95% of the other posts on these topics: Low.

Read Brucio instead! 

> 
> That is favorable coverage of Lisp by a company that made a preemptive 
> strike against Lisp content.

Still do. Though they publish 'Ruby' books.

 The Ruby Programming Language,     $40
 Ruby by Example,                   $30
 Learning Ruby.                     $35
 Ruby Cookbook                      $45
 From Java to Ruby                  $30
 Best of Ruby Quiz                  $30
 Programming Ruby , Second Edition  $45
 Ruby in a Nutshell                 $25

Amazon sells Practical Common Lisp (Apress is the publisher)
for $42.59. It is also freely available online as HTML and PDF.
Peter's book is a good example for a modern Lisp book
with interesting content and an interesting perspective.
There is more space for Lisp books. In the last years
quite a lot has happened in the Lisp world, which
would be good material for one or two Lisp books.
For example I could imagine that there is interest in
a book which describes the implementation, installation and usage
of the current open source Common Lisp implementations:
SBCL, CMUCL, Clozure CL, CLISP, ECL.

> 
> Wow, first the Giants, now this. I guess next Anna Kournikova asks she 
> can come over to talk about her breakup with Julio.
> 
> kenny
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <47a9b88d$0$25053$607ed4bc@cv.net>
Rainer Joswig wrote:
> In article <·························@cv.net>,
>  Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
> 
> 
>>Get it?*:
>>
>> 
>>http://beautifulcode.oreillynet.com/2008/02/arc_an_unappreciated_approach_1.php
> 
> 
> Kenny, that's just a Blogger on one of their web sites.

Sorry, nothing I write is intended to interfere with your right to 
remain suicidally depressed and blind to what is going on around you.

cheers, kenny

-- 
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"In the morning, hear the Way;
  in the evening, die content!"
                     -- Confucius
From: gavino
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <d37e90ae-dce5-459a-9ebf-12fc0dad2138@b2g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 5:39 am, Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
> Rainer Joswig wrote:
> > In article <·························@cv.net>,
> >  Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> >>Get it?*:
>
> >>http://beautifulcode.oreillynet.com/2008/02/arc_an_unappreciated_appr...
>
> > Kenny, that's just a Blogger on one of their web sites.
>
> Sorry, nothing I write is intended to interfere with your right to
> remain suicidally depressed and blind to what is going on around you.
>
> cheers, kenny
>
> --http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
>
> "In the morning, hear the Way;
>   in the evening, die content!"
>                      -- Confucius

lol
stainer boffpigs
From: Pascal Costanza
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <60u18qF1sgfasU1@mid.individual.net>
Ken Tilton wrote:
> 
> 
> Rainer Joswig wrote:
>> In article <·························@cv.net>,
>>  Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Get it?*:
>>>
>>>
>>> http://beautifulcode.oreillynet.com/2008/02/arc_an_unappreciated_approach_1.php 
>>>
>>
>>
>> Kenny, that's just a Blogger on one of their web sites.
> 
> Sorry, nothing I write is intended to interfere with your right to 
> remain suicidally depressed and blind to what is going on around you.

The nice thing about Lisp and the Lisp community (including Scheme) is 
that it consists mostly of people who value the technical merits of Lisp 
and Scheme. Most of the time I have experienced that people are willing 
to explain technical advantages and disadvantages of the different 
design choices and alternative ways of expressing solutions in the 
different Lisp dialects. Those discussions are sometimes heated, often 
even very heated, but it's almost always about facts and value judgments 
based on facts. It's never about popularity.

With Arc this seems vastly different. There are no technical advantages 
in (current) Arc over existing Lisp dialects. There is some syntactic 
sugar and somewhat shorter names on a selected subset of already known 
concepts. And some level of integration of a web application framework 
(or something).

Now Paul Graham claims that Arc is a fundamental rethinking of Lisp (or 
something along those lines). That's nonsense given the meager technical 
contribution of Arc. Yet people start to believe in Paul Graham's 
claims. (Common Lisp and Scheme are "known" to be old, academic and 
complicated - from hearsay, not from first-hand experience - and Arc is 
  now considered a modern Lisp dialect - again from hearsay, not from 
first-hand experience. Note: Even if you try out Arc, you can't really 
tell without having tried the others.)

That sounds dangerous to me. Other new Lisp dialects are more worth to 
be considered because they actually provide new ideas. The only reason 
why there is a big splash about Arc is because it's Paul Graham's own 
personal Lisp dialect, and because Paul Graham enjoys some level of 
popularity.

Why was popularity good again?!?


Pascal

-- 
1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08)
http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/

My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
From: gavino
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <0541bfa2-fd42-4c37-ba70-fb5c6ab2a7ee@1g2000hsl.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 7:15 am, Pascal Costanza <····@p-cos.net> wrote:
> Ken Tilton wrote:
>
> > Rainer Joswig wrote:
> >> In article <·························@cv.net>,
> >>  Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> >>> Get it?*:
>
> >>>http://beautifulcode.oreillynet.com/2008/02/arc_an_unappreciated_appr...
>
> >> Kenny, that's just a Blogger on one of their web sites.
>
> > Sorry, nothing I write is intended to interfere with your right to
> > remain suicidally depressed and blind to what is going on around you.
>
> The nice thing about Lisp and the Lisp community (including Scheme) is
> that it consists mostly of people who value the technical merits of Lisp
> and Scheme. Most of the time I have experienced that people are willing
> to explain technical advantages and disadvantages of the different
> design choices and alternative ways of expressing solutions in the
> different Lisp dialects. Those discussions are sometimes heated, often
> even very heated, but it's almost always about facts and value judgments
> based on facts. It's never about popularity.
>
> With Arc this seems vastly different. There are no technical advantages
> in (current) Arc over existing Lisp dialects. There is some syntactic
> sugar and somewhat shorter names on a selected subset of already known
> concepts. And some level of integration of a web application framework
> (or something).
>
> Now Paul Graham claims that Arc is a fundamental rethinking of Lisp (or
> something along those lines). That's nonsense given the meager technical
> contribution of Arc. Yet people start to believe in Paul Graham's
> claims. (Common Lisp and Scheme are "known" to be old, academic and
> complicated - from hearsay, not from first-hand experience - and Arc is
>   now considered a modern Lisp dialect - again from hearsay, not from
> first-hand experience. Note: Even if you try out Arc, you can't really
> tell without having tried the others.)
>
> That sounds dangerous to me. Other new Lisp dialects are more worth to
> be considered because they actually provide new ideas. The only reason
> why there is a big splash about Arc is because it's Paul Graham's own
> personal Lisp dialect, and because Paul Graham enjoys some level of
> popularity.
>
> Why was popularity good again?!?
>
> Pascal
>
> --
> 1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08)http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/
>
> My website:http://p-cos.net
> Common Lisp Document Repository:http://cdr.eurolisp.org
> Closer to MOP & ContextL:http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/


again because he made something that worked in lisp, and outdid others
using oracle microsoft and other crap
From: John Thingstad
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <op.t533uwe9ut4oq5@pandora.alfanett.no>
P� Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:15:38 +0100, skrev Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net>:

> Ken Tilton wrote:
>>   Rainer Joswig wrote:
>>> In article <·························@cv.net>,
>>>  Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>> Get it?*:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://beautifulcode.oreillynet.com/2008/02/arc_an_unappreciated_approach_1.php
>>>
>>>
>>> Kenny, that's just a Blogger on one of their web sites.
>>  Sorry, nothing I write is intended to interfere with your right to  
>> remain suicidally depressed and blind to what is going on around you.
>
> The nice thing about Lisp and the Lisp community (including Scheme) is  
> that it consists mostly of people who value the technical merits of Lisp  
> and Scheme. Most of the time I have experienced that people are willing  
> to explain technical advantages and disadvantages of the different  
> design choices and alternative ways of expressing solutions in the  
> different Lisp dialects. Those discussions are sometimes heated, often  
> even very heated, but it's almost always about facts and value judgments  
> based on facts. It's never about popularity.
>
> With Arc this seems vastly different. There are no technical advantages  
> in (current) Arc over existing Lisp dialects. There is some syntactic  
> sugar and somewhat shorter names on a selected subset of already known  
> concepts. And some level of integration of a web application framework  
> (or something).
>
> Now Paul Graham claims that Arc is a fundamental rethinking of Lisp (or  
> something along those lines). That's nonsense given the meager technical  
> contribution of Arc. Yet people start to believe in Paul Graham's  
> claims. (Common Lisp and Scheme are "known" to be old, academic and  
> complicated - from hearsay, not from first-hand experience - and Arc is  
>   now considered a modern Lisp dialect - again from hearsay, not from  
> first-hand experience. Note: Even if you try out Arc, you can't really  
> tell without having tried the others.)
>
> That sounds dangerous to me. Other new Lisp dialects are more worth to  
> be considered because they actually provide new ideas. The only reason  
> why there is a big splash about Arc is because it's Paul Graham's own  
> personal Lisp dialect, and because Paul Graham enjoys some level of  
> popularity.
>
> Why was popularity good again?!?
>
>
> Pascal
>

The danger is in what we don't know. Either ignore Arc, or find out what  
you are talking about.
Your clueless attacks are starting to annoy me. I am not sure whether I  
like it or hate it. But I am wiling to give it a month.

--------------
John Thingstad
From: Pascal Costanza
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <60u8fqF1rqqtdU1@mid.individual.net>
John Thingstad wrote:

> The danger is in what we don't know. Either ignore Arc, or find out what 
> you are talking about.
> Your clueless attacks are starting to annoy me. I am not sure whether I 
> like it or hate it. But I am wiling to give it a month.

Why does Arc deserve a more thorough investigation than any other of the 
recent Lisp dialects / extensions? (This is not a rhetoric question, but 
is closely related to the central point of my criticism.)

Why not, say, lush [1], to pick an arbitrary (!) example...

Pascal

[1] http://lush.sourceforge.net/

-- 
1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08)
http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/

My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
From: ···········@gmail.com
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <45dc5d1b-2e53-4f3b-9743-082e1209f7aa@s19g2000prg.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 12:18 pm, Pascal Costanza <····@p-cos.net> wrote:
> John Thingstad wrote:
> > The danger is in what we don't know. Either ignore Arc, or find out what
> > you are talking about.
> > Your clueless attacks are starting to annoy me. I am not sure whether I
> > like it or hate it. But I am wiling to give it a month.
>
> Why does Arc deserve a more thorough investigation than any other of the
> recent Lisp dialects / extensions? (This is not a rhetoric question, but
> is closely related to the central point of my criticism.)
>
> Why not, say, lush [1], to pick an arbitrary (!) example...
>
> Pascal
>
> [1]http://lush.sourceforge.net/
>
> --
> 1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08)http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/
>
> My website:http://p-cos.net
> Common Lisp Document Repository:http://cdr.eurolisp.org
> Closer to MOP & ContextL:http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/

From the Lush website:

How big is Lush?
About 47K lines of C in the src and include directories; about 1000
functions defined at startup; 48K lines of Lush and 1300 functions in
the library; and 12,000 functions in the Packages directory (this
represents several 100 kilo-lines of code but much of it is binding to
external libraries). Oh, and 650 pages of documentation.

Lush is written in C. I honestly believe the reason Arc is getting so
much attention is because it is written in scheme, which is fairly
high level and is therefore theoretically easy to understand how Arc
was implemented. That's the draw; pretty much anyone can reimplement
its internals. Have you ever looked at the implementation of common-
lisp? Of course you have, you probably implemented your own. The point
is that the average user wouldn't be able to make sense of it the way
they can make sense of Arc. If Arc were written in C, I don't think
it'd be half as popular.

Also, part of Arc's popularity is the brevity and syntactic sugar.
They are small changes like the let or with statements, but they add
up. The little things can make or break a language so I cannot agree
with you that syntactic sugar shouldn't be considered important.
Seriously, all things being equal (this is hypothetical, I'm not
saying all things ARE equal) wouldn't you choose the language that was
more succinct? (This includes readability as part of the all things
being equal.)
From: Pascal Costanza
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <60uhdnF1s48n8U1@mid.individual.net>
···········@gmail.com wrote:

> Seriously, all things being equal (this is hypothetical, I'm not
> saying all things ARE equal) wouldn't you choose the language that was
> more succinct? (This includes readability as part of the all things
> being equal.)

I would try the different equal-modulo-succinctness language and use the 
one that works best for me.


Pascal

-- 
1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08)
http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/

My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
From: gavino
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <8854bb21-78d5-4ad6-b099-29a8600a4849@e4g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 9:18 am, Pascal Costanza <····@p-cos.net> wrote:
> John Thingstad wrote:
> > The danger is in what we don't know. Either ignore Arc, or find out what
> > you are talking about.
> > Your clueless attacks are starting to annoy me. I am not sure whether I
> > like it or hate it. But I am wiling to give it a month.
>
> Why does Arc deserve a more thorough investigation than any other of the
> recent Lisp dialects / extensions? (This is not a rhetoric question, but
> is closely related to the central point of my criticism.)
>
> Why not, say, lush [1], to pick an arbitrary (!) example...
>
> Pascal
>
> [1]http://lush.sourceforge.net/
>
> --
> 1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08)http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/
>
> My website:http://p-cos.net
> Common Lisp Document Repository:http://cdr.eurolisp.org
> Closer to MOP & ContextL:http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/

because Paul Graham made 50,000,000 $ with lisp.
From: John Thingstad
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <op.t536x2wkut4oq5@pandora.alfanett.no>
P� Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:18:50 +0100, skrev Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net>:

> John Thingstad wrote:
>
>> The danger is in what we don't know. Either ignore Arc, or find out  
>> what you are talking about.
>> Your clueless attacks are starting to annoy me. I am not sure whether I  
>> like it or hate it. But I am wiling to give it a month.
>
> Why does Arc deserve a more thorough investigation than any other of the  
> recent Lisp dialects / extensions? (This is not a rhetoric question, but  
> is closely related to the central point of my criticism.)
>
> Why not, say, lush [1], to pick an arbitrary (!) example...
>
> Pascal
>
> [1] http://lush.sourceforge.net/
>

That belongs in the ignore bin. We have never discussed lush. (To my  
knowledge)


--------------
John Thingstad
From: samantha
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <852d9640-2abd-4c60-9e5a-55d755e8e95f@h11g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 9:59 am, "John Thingstad" <·······@online.no> wrote:
> På Wed, 06 Feb 2008 18:18:50 +0100, skrev Pascal Costanza <····@p-cos.net>:
>
>
>
> > John Thingstad wrote:
>
> >> The danger is in what we don't know. Either ignore Arc, or find out
> >> what you are talking about.
> >> Your clueless attacks are starting to annoy me. I am not sure whether I
> >> like it or hate it. But I am wiling to give it a month.
>
> > Why does Arc deserve a more thorough investigation than any other of the
> > recent Lisp dialects / extensions? (This is not a rhetoric question, but
> > is closely related to the central point of my criticism.)
>
> > Why not, say, lush [1], to pick an arbitrary (!) example...
>
> > Pascal
>
> > [1]http://lush.sourceforge.net/
>
> That belongs in the ignore bin. We have never discussed lush. (To my
> knowledge)
>
> --------------
> John Thingstad

Then why didn't you ignore it?  Pascal Constanza brought up some good
points.  You immediately attacked at a personal level without
addressing those points.  Why are you choosing such a response?
From: Damien Kick
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <13qlditdec4grbc@corp.supernews.com>
John Thingstad wrote:
> P� Wed, 06 Feb 2008 16:15:38 +0100, skrev Pascal Costanza <··@p-cos.net>:
>>
>> The nice thing about Lisp and the Lisp community (including Scheme) is 
>> that it consists mostly of people who value the technical merits of 
>> Lisp and Scheme. [...]
>>
>> With Arc this seems vastly different. There are no technical 
>> advantages in (current) Arc over existing Lisp dialects. There is some 
>> syntactic sugar and somewhat shorter names on a selected subset of 
>> already known concepts. And some level of integration of a web 
>> application framework (or something).
>>
>> Now Paul Graham claims that Arc is a fundamental rethinking of Lisp 
>> (or something along those lines). That's nonsense given the meager 
>> technical contribution of Arc. [...]
>>
>> That sounds dangerous to me. Other new Lisp dialects are more worth to 
>> be considered because they actually provide new ideas. The only reason 
>> why there is a big splash about Arc is because it's Paul Graham's own 
>> personal Lisp dialect, and because Paul Graham enjoys some level of 
>> popularity.
>>
>> Why was popularity good again?!?
>>
>>
>> Pascal
>>
> 
> The danger is in what we don't know. Either ignore Arc, or find out what 
> you are talking about.
> Your clueless attacks are starting to annoy me. I am not sure whether I 
> like it or hate it. But I am wiling to give it a month.
> 
> --------------
> John Thingstad

I don't think one necessarily true that one can not judge a book by its 
cover.

<blockquote cite="http://tinyurl.com/7m42y">
The aphorism "you can't tell a book by its cover" originated in the 
times when books were sold in plain cardboard covers, to be bound by 
each purchaser according to his own taste. In those days, you couldn't 
tell a book by its cover. But publishing has advanced since then: 
present-day publishers work hard to make the cover something you can 
tell a book by.

I spend a lot of time in bookshops and I feel as if I have by now 
learned to understand everything publishers mean to tell me about a 
book, and perhaps a bit more. The time I haven't spent in bookshops I've 
spent mostly in front of computers, and I feel as if I've learned, to 
some degree, to judge technology by its cover as well. It may be just 
luck, but I've saved myself from a few technologies that turned out to 
be real stinkers.

So far, [Arc] seems like a stinker to me. I've never written an [Arc] 
program, never more than glanced over [web tutorials] about it, but I 
have a hunch that it won't be a very successful language. I may turn out 
to be mistaken; making predictions about technology is a dangerous 
business. But for what it's worth, as a sort of time capsule, here's why 
I don't like the look of [Arc]:
</blockquote>

Of course, Arc is not Java, and so the reasons will be different...

 From what little I've seen, I agree with Pascal C.  How is Arc not Lisp 
with a few '_' thrown in?  IF as a version of COND with a few less 
parentheses?  PRN instead of PRINT?  It's gotta be a joke, right?  This 
is a whole new dialect of Lisp?  How could any of this not simply be 
accomplished by shadowing a few symbols, writing a few macros, etc.?  I 
don't claim to know as much about Lisp as some of the people in this 
newsgroup, but I think that even I could accomplish this, that, and the 
other.  But I don't even have to bother because I've already judged that 
book by its cover.

PAIP Prolog is not simply an implementation of Prolog which happens to 
use Lisp but is rather a melding of the two.  One can write Prolisp or 
Lisp logic or something like that.  And Norvig certainly didn't claim to 
have introduced a new version of Prolog, one with "?variables" instead 
of "Variables".

I don't usually follow Mark T.'s Qi posts that closely (and this is not 
meant to be a dispersion on Qi but I just tend to spend time on other 
things) but I think I remember his posting a few easy lines of Qi to 
basically drop into Lisp.  Qi is a new language, which seems to me, and 
I could be wrong, to have been implemented with Lisp as the programmable 
programming language.  It is a new language but also something of an 
extension of Lisp.

So P.G. doesn't like OO and so Arc doesn't have it.  Maybe OO is nothing 
but hype and maybe it isn't.  But I don't have to use CLOS if I don't 
want to use it and it is already there if I do decide to use it.  Isn't 
that similar to Java, for example, trying to force the programmer to do 
the Right Thing by not providing tools which its designer(s) considered 
to be ripe for misuse?

I don't think I've written anything new here.  IIRC, most of these 
complaints have already been leveled at Arc in other postings.  However, 
I think I may be the first one to have quoted the introduction to P.G.'s 
essay justifying his judging Java's book by its cover to justify judging 
Arc by its own.  Arc may be the first language to implement itself with 
itself, only changing the name, and to have also provided a criticism of 
itself, under a different name, before it was even born.  Now *that's* 
meta-circular.
From: Pascal Costanza
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <60uho1F1s48n8U2@mid.individual.net>
j.oke wrote:

> Sure, popularity creates much envy, automagically...
> 
> (If we only could leave out that factor, many of the gratuitous hate
> here would stop immediately...)

I'm not sure why you are talking about hate in response to my posting. 
All I'm doing is asking what's so special about Arc - I don't see it. So 
far, nobody has given an answer to that, all I see is a lot of 
hand-waving. (The only exception being not.danieli's explanation that 
Arc is implemented in Scheme instead of something low-level.)

Sure, maybe I'm missing something...

I'll stop now.


Pascal

-- 
1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08)
http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/

My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
From: danb
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <136183d2-a4ca-475f-aa99-d41f0547295e@y5g2000hsf.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 1:56 pm, Pascal Costanza <····@p-cos.net> wrote:
> Sure, maybe I'm missing something...

Arc seems to be optimized for startups trying to hack up web code to
make a quick profit, possibly selling it to some huge Megacorp.  Not
wanting to deal with an obscure scripting language, Megacorp would
throw away half the program and rewrite the other half in Blub.  It
makes sense for startups and the VCs who fund them, but maybe not so
much for larger projects that could benefit from a more scalable
language.

--Dan
www.prairienet.org/~dsb/
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <47aa41ec$0$25051$607ed4bc@cv.net>
danb wrote:
> On Feb 6, 1:56 pm, Pascal Costanza <····@p-cos.net> wrote:
> 
>>Sure, maybe I'm missing something...
> 
> 
> Arc seems to be optimized for startups trying to hack up web code to
> make a quick profit, ...

Actually, one can just read what Graham said about why he was doing Arc 
and understand what Arc turned out to be (so far), no need for guesswork:

    http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html

Quite predictably, this group is doing everything it can to find reasons 
not to like Arc. We have met the enemy and he is us. We can stop 
wondering why other people do not understand how great is Lisp, they are 
doing what this group is doing. Head. Sand. Insert.

We think Arc sucks because Graham kept all the good things about Lisp. 
How dumb is that?

We are outraged that Graham has been successful in drawing attention to 
a Lisp just by releasing one. This when all we want is for Lisp to get 
more attention so we can use it in our day jobs.

And after living with the alpha-alpha release for zero to two hours (but 
mostly zero) we have concluded that nothing was gained with the brevity 
enhancements, even tho brevity is the kind of thing with emergent 
benefits one could not expect to grok in less than a month, since Arc is 
so close to the Lisp's we already know. Guess what,kiddies. Take a 
hundred pounds of dead weight off a race car and you have a new race 
car. Hell, during a race they tighten one bolt and back out another and 
they pick up a second.

This close to perfection, the flap of a butterfly matters.

kenny


-- 
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"In the morning, hear the Way;
  in the evening, die content!"
                     -- Confucius
From: danb
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <e1807dea-0284-47fb-80cb-1f02d88d05b6@v46g2000hsv.googlegroups.com>
> danb wrote:
> > Arc seems to be optimized for startups trying to hack up web code to
> > make a quick profit, ...

On Feb 6, 5:25 pm, Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
> Actually, one can just read what Graham said about why he was doing Arc
> and understand what Arc turned out to be (so far), no need for guesswork:
>    http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html

Good point.  It looks like I was right though:

> an improved version of Python
> powerful libraries for server-based applications

And he doesn't say much about scalability, which becomes more
important
after the founders sell.

> Quite predictably, this group is doing everything it can to find reasons
> not to like Arc.

How is that predictable?  cll seems very friendly to Qi, which may be
an
even bigger threat to CL in some areas.

> Head. Sand. Insert.

Speaking of which, do you really think the current scripting fad
will last forever?  I understand that this may be wishful thinking,
but those ML-family languages have some very nice features for
large-scale projects, and I think Lisp would benefit from importing
some of them.

--Dan
www.prairienet.org/~dsb/
From: gavino
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <723f45f6-ee22-4957-9d2b-cc050670dec1@e4g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 5:05 pm, danb <·········@gmail.com> wrote:
> > danb wrote:
> > > Arc seems to be optimized for startups trying to hack up web code to
> > > make a quick profit, ...
>
> On Feb 6, 5:25 pm, Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> > Actually, one can just read what Graham said about why he was doing Arc
> > and understand what Arc turned out to be (so far), no need for guesswork:
> >    http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html
>
> Good point.  It looks like I was right though:
>
> > an improved version of Python
> > powerful libraries for server-based applications
>
> And he doesn't say much about scalability, which becomes more
> important
> after the founders sell.
>
> > Quite predictably, this group is doing everything it can to find reasons
> > not to like Arc.
>
> How is that predictable?  cll seems very friendly to Qi, which may be
> an
> even bigger threat to CL in some areas.
>
> > Head. Sand. Insert.
>
> Speaking of which, do you really think the current scripting fad
> will last forever?  I understand that this may be wishful thinking,
> but those ML-family languages have some very nice features for
> large-scale projects, and I think Lisp would benefit from importing
> some of them.
>
> --Danwww.prairienet.org/~dsb/

whats Qi?
From: George Neuner
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <e4smq3t3t9jk6h6jj358uknkn5mi1s10in@4ax.com>
On Wed, 6 Feb 2008 17:10:41 -0800 (PST), gavino <·········@gmail.com>
wrote:

>whats Qi?

http://www.lambdassociates.org/aboutqi.htm

George
--
for email reply remove "/" from address
From: Ken Tilton
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <47aa6a86$0$25049$607ed4bc@cv.net>
danb wrote:
>>danb wrote:
>>
>>>Arc seems to be optimized for startups trying to hack up web code to
>>>make a quick profit, ...
> 
> 
> On Feb 6, 5:25 pm, Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
> 
>>Actually, one can just read what Graham said about why he was doing Arc
>>and understand what Arc turned out to be (so far), no need for guesswork:
>>   http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html
> 
> 
> Good point.  It looks like I was right though:
> 
> 
>>an improved version of Python
>>powerful libraries for server-based applications

One summer does not a pigeon make. Besides:

"I only wrote all the web stuff to create the pressure of real 
applications pushing down on the [language] core."
     http://paulgraham.com/core.html

Come on people, do your homework. Oh, wait, you have already reached the 
desired conclusion with the sand piling up against the eardrum, yer all 
done, silly me.

> And he doesn't say much about scalability, which becomes more
> important
> after the founders sell.

"My first priority with Arc right now is the core language�those 
operators that are neither primitives like car and cdr, nor 
special-purpose library functions."


> 
> 
>>Quite predictably, this group is doing everything it can to find reasons
>>not to like Arc.
> 
> 
> How is that predictable?  cll seems very friendly to Qi, which may be
> an
> even bigger threat to CL in some areas.

Everybody loves an underdog, and everybody outside of New England is how 
the Super Bowl ended, and I do not even see the comparison since Qi is 
so different.

> 
> 
>>Head. Sand. Insert.
> 
> 
> Speaking of which, do you really think the current scripting fad
> will last forever? 

I thought we were talking about Arc:

"As I said in the Arc Challenge, there has to be at least one optimal 
path up from axioms to a complete language for everyday programming, and 
the goal of Arc is to try to discover one."

Hmmm. Complete? Does sound scripting to me.

> I understand that this may be wishful thinking,
> but those ML-family languages have some very nice features for
> large-scale projects, and I think Lisp would benefit from importing
> some of them.

Not knowing to which features you refer, I have not much reaction other 
than, gosh, I thought they were type-centric languages. Ewwww.

kenny

-- 
http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/

"In the morning, hear the Way;
  in the evening, die content!"
                     -- Confucius
From: gavino
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <c8902c69-da47-4941-8a90-2a799222ffdb@p69g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 3:25 pm, Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
> danb wrote:
> > On Feb 6, 1:56 pm, Pascal Costanza <····@p-cos.net> wrote:
>
> >>Sure, maybe I'm missing something...
>
> > Arc seems to be optimized for startups trying to hack up web code to
> > make a quick profit, ...
>
> Actually, one can just read what Graham said about why he was doing Arc
> and understand what Arc turned out to be (so far), no need for guesswork:
>
>    http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html
>
> Quite predictably, this group is doing everything it can to find reasons
> not to like Arc. We have met the enemy and he is us. We can stop
> wondering why other people do not understand how great is Lisp, they are
> doing what this group is doing. Head. Sand. Insert.
>
> We think Arc sucks because Graham kept all the good things about Lisp.
> How dumb is that?
>
> We are outraged that Graham has been successful in drawing attention to
> a Lisp just by releasing one. This when all we want is for Lisp to get
> more attention so we can use it in our day jobs.
>
> And after living with the alpha-alpha release for zero to two hours (but
> mostly zero) we have concluded that nothing was gained with the brevity
> enhancements, even tho brevity is the kind of thing with emergent
> benefits one could not expect to grok in less than a month, since Arc is
> so close to the Lisp's we already know. Guess what,kiddies. Take a
> hundred pounds of dead weight off a race car and you have a new race
> car. Hell, during a race they tighten one bolt and back out another and
> they pick up a second.
>
> This close to perfection, the flap of a butterfly matters.
>
> kenny
>
> --http://www.theoryyalgebra.com/
>
> "In the morning, hear the Way;
>   in the evening, die content!"
>                      -- Confucius

that was like poetic
From: vanekl
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <foeceg$tk6$1@aioe.org>
...
> This close to perfection, the flap of a butterfly matters.
> 
> kenny

programmers have long harnessed butterfly power
(there's even an emacs chord for it):
http://xkcd.com/378/
From: Peter Hildebrandt
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <47ab2ad2$0$90263$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>
Ken Tilton wrote:
> Actually, one can just read what Graham said about why he was doing Arc 
> and understand what Arc turned out to be (so far), no need for guesswork:
> 
>    http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html
> 
> Quite predictably, this group is doing everything it can to find reasons 
> not to like Arc. We have met the enemy and he is us. We can stop 
> wondering why other people do not understand how great is Lisp, they are 
> doing what this group is doing. Head. Sand. Insert.

Or from a slightly different angle:  Graham is a smart guy, he thinks 
out of the box, brings in a number of fresh ideas -- and he does not use 
his work to make another $50m, but he puts in open source land.

So wouldn't it be the natural thing to go play with the new toys on the 
innovation playground, make copies of the ones we like, and bring them home?

I haven't done a lot of Arc yet (just went through the tutorial, read 
some code, and played a little), and there are a few things I like, eg. 
some of the short names, his if, or his let.

Then I went home to my lisp project, saw how these things could make 
life easier, and hacked a few macros so that I can write (with-uniqs res 
body) and (with-uniqs (a b c) body) and the like.  Those are trivial, of 
course, but, hey, that does not mean no one appreciates it (buying 
flowers is trivial for instance ...)

I have seen another post here demonstrating how to put some of Graham's 
ideas into lisp.  Why are we not just happy that we are given a bunch of 
new toys for free?

Gotta get back to (re)writing lt (the shorter let, you know),

Peter

> We think Arc sucks because Graham kept all the good things about Lisp. 
> How dumb is that?
> 
> We are outraged that Graham has been successful in drawing attention to 
> a Lisp just by releasing one. This when all we want is for Lisp to get 
> more attention so we can use it in our day jobs.
> 
> And after living with the alpha-alpha release for zero to two hours (but 
> mostly zero) we have concluded that nothing was gained with the brevity 
> enhancements, even tho brevity is the kind of thing with emergent 
> benefits one could not expect to grok in less than a month, since Arc is 
> so close to the Lisp's we already know. Guess what,kiddies. Take a 
> hundred pounds of dead weight off a race car and you have a new race 
> car. Hell, during a race they tighten one bolt and back out another and 
> they pick up a second.
> 
> This close to perfection, the flap of a butterfly matters.
> 
> kenny
> 
> 
From: Rainer Joswig
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <joswig-CF79DA.17205407022008@news-europe.giganews.com>
In article <·························@news.sunsite.dk>,
 Peter Hildebrandt <·················@gmail.com> wrote:

> Ken Tilton wrote:
> > Actually, one can just read what Graham said about why he was doing Arc 
> > and understand what Arc turned out to be (so far), no need for guesswork:
> > 
> >    http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html
> > 
> > Quite predictably, this group is doing everything it can to find reasons 
> > not to like Arc. We have met the enemy and he is us. We can stop 
> > wondering why other people do not understand how great is Lisp, they are 
> > doing what this group is doing. Head. Sand. Insert.
> 
> Or from a slightly different angle:  Graham is a smart guy, he thinks 
> out of the box, brings in a number of fresh ideas -- and he does not use 
> his work to make another $50m, but he puts in open source land.
> 
> So wouldn't it be the natural thing to go play with the new toys on the 
> innovation playground, make copies of the ones we like, and bring them home?
> 
> I haven't done a lot of Arc yet (just went through the tutorial, read 
> some code, and played a little), and there are a few things I like, eg. 
> some of the short names, his if, or his let.
> 
> Then I went home to my lisp project, saw how these things could make 
> life easier, and hacked a few macros so that I can write (with-uniqs res 
> body) and (with-uniqs (a b c) body) and the like.  Those are trivial, of 
> course, but, hey, that does not mean no one appreciates it (buying 
> flowers is trivial for instance ...)
> 
> I have seen another post here demonstrating how to put some of Graham's 
> ideas into lisp.  Why are we not just happy that we are given a bunch of 
> new toys for free?

How do you know these 'toys' are new? That Graham renames them
does not make them new. Arc's UNIQ is similar to GENSYM in Common Lisp.

WITH-UNIQ ? That's called usually WITH-GENSYMS in Common Lisp.
Even described in Peter Seibel's book 'Practical Common Lisp'.

Just assume that almost any micro-optimization of Lisp syntax you can
think of has been done before. There is a large bunch
of these in the greater Lisp (MacLisp, ZetaLisp, Common Lisp)
tradition.

Study other Lisp code (for example Maxima is full of old idioms) and you
will find a lot of that stuff.

> 
> Gotta get back to (re)writing lt (the shorter let, you know),
> 
> Peter
> 
> > We think Arc sucks because Graham kept all the good things about Lisp. 
> > How dumb is that?
> > 
> > We are outraged that Graham has been successful in drawing attention to 
> > a Lisp just by releasing one. This when all we want is for Lisp to get 
> > more attention so we can use it in our day jobs.
> > 
> > And after living with the alpha-alpha release for zero to two hours (but 
> > mostly zero) we have concluded that nothing was gained with the brevity 
> > enhancements, even tho brevity is the kind of thing with emergent 
> > benefits one could not expect to grok in less than a month, since Arc is 
> > so close to the Lisp's we already know. Guess what,kiddies. Take a 
> > hundred pounds of dead weight off a race car and you have a new race 
> > car. Hell, during a race they tighten one bolt and back out another and 
> > they pick up a second.
> > 
> > This close to perfection, the flap of a butterfly matters.
> > 
> > kenny
> > 
> >
From: Peter Hildebrandt
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <47ab33da$0$90263$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>
Rainer Joswig wrote:
> In article <·························@news.sunsite.dk>,
>  Peter Hildebrandt <·················@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Ken Tilton wrote:
>>> Actually, one can just read what Graham said about why he was doing Arc 
>>> and understand what Arc turned out to be (so far), no need for guesswork:
>>>
>>>    http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html
>>>
>>> Quite predictably, this group is doing everything it can to find reasons 
>>> not to like Arc. We have met the enemy and he is us. We can stop 
>>> wondering why other people do not understand how great is Lisp, they are 
>>> doing what this group is doing. Head. Sand. Insert.
>> Or from a slightly different angle:  Graham is a smart guy, he thinks 
>> out of the box, brings in a number of fresh ideas -- and he does not use 
>> his work to make another $50m, but he puts in open source land.
>>
>> So wouldn't it be the natural thing to go play with the new toys on the 
>> innovation playground, make copies of the ones we like, and bring them home?
>>
>> I haven't done a lot of Arc yet (just went through the tutorial, read 
>> some code, and played a little), and there are a few things I like, eg. 
>> some of the short names, his if, or his let.
>>
>> Then I went home to my lisp project, saw how these things could make 
>> life easier, and hacked a few macros so that I can write (with-uniqs res 
>> body) and (with-uniqs (a b c) body) and the like.  Those are trivial, of 
>> course, but, hey, that does not mean no one appreciates it (buying 
>> flowers is trivial for instance ...)
>>
>> I have seen another post here demonstrating how to put some of Graham's 
>> ideas into lisp.  Why are we not just happy that we are given a bunch of 
>> new toys for free?
> 
> How do you know these 'toys' are new? That Graham renames them
> does not make them new. Arc's UNIQ is similar to GENSYM in Common Lisp.

Rainer, you got me all wrong here.  I did not claim that everything in 
Arc is newer or technologically better or whatever else.

All I wanted to point out is that I like the name with-uniqs, because to 
me with-unique-symbols would be a better description of what 
with-gensyms /does/ (in contrast to how it is /implemented/), but too 
long.  So I stayed with with the common one.  uniqs is a nice 
abbreviation that combines shortness and expressiveness.

Also, I intended to write a short post about quick things (like stealing 
a name).  A syntax for one-variable lambda expressions is a nice thing 
as well (IMO), but since it involves changing the readtable, it might 
clash more easily with other people's stuff than just introducing a new 
name.  So I chose to avoid that.

> WITH-UNIQ ? That's called usually WITH-GENSYMS in Common Lisp.
> Even described in Peter Seibel's book 'Practical Common Lisp'.

Yep, I know, and believe it, I have it in my own little utility 
collection, and I use it in my own projects, and when I have to work on 
someone else's file, and don't want to introduce a dependency, it is 
among the first things I copy'n'paste in there.

> Just assume that almost any micro-optimization of Lisp syntax you can
> think of has been done before. There is a large bunch
> of these in the greater Lisp (MacLisp, ZetaLisp, Common Lisp)
> tradition.

But still there is no with-gensyms in the standard.  So obviously there 
/is/ room for improvement (as compared to Common Lisp).  I assume you 
look at the ideas of MacLisp et al and introduce what you like into your 
library, and it makes your life more enjoyable.

So why not wait and look what Arc will come up with?  No one forces you 
to write with-uniqs instead of with-gensyms (or (let a b ...) instead of 
(let ((a b)) ...)).

All I'm saying here is that we are discussing at a level where things 
are mainly a matter of *taste*.  (And fortunately we have a language 
that allows each of us to write in their preferred style)

> Study other Lisp code (for example Maxima is full of old idioms) and you
> will find a lot of that stuff.

And guess what -- that's kind of what I do from time to time.  And 
sometimes I even study brand new code.  If I like the idea I don't 
really care whether I got it from the original source or from someone 
who reinvented it.

Peter

>> Gotta get back to (re)writing lt (the shorter let, you know),
>>
>> Peter
>>
>>> We think Arc sucks because Graham kept all the good things about Lisp. 
>>> How dumb is that?
>>>
>>> We are outraged that Graham has been successful in drawing attention to 
>>> a Lisp just by releasing one. This when all we want is for Lisp to get 
>>> more attention so we can use it in our day jobs.
>>>
>>> And after living with the alpha-alpha release for zero to two hours (but 
>>> mostly zero) we have concluded that nothing was gained with the brevity 
>>> enhancements, even tho brevity is the kind of thing with emergent 
>>> benefits one could not expect to grok in less than a month, since Arc is 
>>> so close to the Lisp's we already know. Guess what,kiddies. Take a 
>>> hundred pounds of dead weight off a race car and you have a new race 
>>> car. Hell, during a race they tighten one bolt and back out another and 
>>> they pick up a second.
>>>
>>> This close to perfection, the flap of a butterfly matters.
>>>
>>> kenny
>>>
>>>
From: gavino
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <d1678df8-81d5-436c-afca-076ae37b3488@v17g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 11:56 am, Pascal Costanza <····@p-cos.net> wrote:
> j.oke wrote:
> > Sure, popularity creates much envy, automagically...
>
> > (If we only could leave out that factor, many of the gratuitous hate
> > here would stop immediately...)
>
> I'm not sure why you are talking about hate in response to my posting.
> All I'm doing is asking what's so special about Arc - I don't see it. So
> far, nobody has given an answer to that, all I see is a lot of
> hand-waving. (The only exception being not.danieli's explanation that
> Arc is implemented in Scheme instead of something low-level.)
>
> Sure, maybe I'm missing something...
>
> I'll stop now.
>
> Pascal
>
> --
> 1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08)http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/
>
> My website:http://p-cos.net
> Common Lisp Document Repository:http://cdr.eurolisp.org
> Closer to MOP & ContextL:http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/


pascal goto a bath house and be hapy.
From: Pascal Costanza
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <60um4bF1sbne9U1@mid.individual.net>
j.oke wrote:
> On 6 Feb, 20:56, Pascal Costanza <····@p-cos.net> wrote:
>> j.oke wrote:
>>> Sure, popularity creates much envy, automagically...
>>> (If we only could leave out that factor, many of the gratuitous hate
>>> here would stop immediately...)
>> I'm not sure why you are talking about hate in response to my posting.
>> All I'm doing is asking what's so special about Arc - I don't see it. So
>> far, nobody has given an answer to that, all I see is a lot of
>> hand-waving. (The only exception being not.danieli's explanation that
>> Arc is implemented in Scheme instead of something low-level.)
>>
>> Sure, maybe I'm missing something...
>>
>> I'll stop now.
>>
>> Pascal
> 
> OK, 'hate' was inappropriate.

No problem. ;)

> (Personally I'll do some playing with Arc, and I'm sure to find some
> smart ideas, but I'll sure not substitute CL with any other Lisp, no
> way!)

Sure, go ahead. ;)


Pascal

-- 
1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08)
http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/

My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
From: pchristensen
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <e94716c7-acb5-4e35-8483-0c98f26b8d8d@h11g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 9:15 am, Pascal Costanza <····@p-cos.net> wrote:
> Ken Tilton wrote:
>
> > Rainer Joswig wrote:
> >> In article <·························@cv.net>,
> >>  Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> >>> Get it?*:
>
> >>>http://beautifulcode.oreillynet.com/2008/02/arc_an_unappreciated_appr...
>
> >> Kenny, that's just a Blogger on one of their web sites.
>
> > Sorry, nothing I write is intended to interfere with your right to
> > remain suicidally depressed and blind to what is going on around you.
>
> The nice thing about Lisp and the Lisp community (including Scheme) is
> that it consists mostly of people who value the technical merits of Lisp
> and Scheme. Most of the time I have experienced that people are willing
> to explain technical advantages and disadvantages of the different
> design choices and alternative ways of expressing solutions in the
> different Lisp dialects. Those discussions are sometimes heated, often
> even very heated, but it's almost always about facts and value judgments
> based on facts. It's never about popularity.
>
> With Arc this seems vastly different. There are no technical advantages
> in (current) Arc over existing Lisp dialects. There is some syntactic
> sugar and somewhat shorter names on a selected subset of already known
> concepts. And some level of integration of a web application framework
> (or something).
>
> Now Paul Graham claims that Arc is a fundamental rethinking of Lisp (or
> something along those lines). That's nonsense given the meager technical
> contribution of Arc. Yet people start to believe in Paul Graham's
> claims. (Common Lisp and Scheme are "known" to be old, academic and
> complicated - from hearsay, not from first-hand experience - and Arc is
>   now considered a modern Lisp dialect - again from hearsay, not from
> first-hand experience. Note: Even if you try out Arc, you can't really
> tell without having tried the others.)
>
> That sounds dangerous to me. Other new Lisp dialects are more worth to
> be considered because they actually provide new ideas. The only reason
> why there is a big splash about Arc is because it's Paul Graham's own
> personal Lisp dialect, and because Paul Graham enjoys some level of
> popularity.
>
> Why was popularity good again?!?
>
> Pascal
>
> --
> 1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08)http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/
>
> My website:http://p-cos.net
> Common Lisp Document Repository:http://cdr.eurolisp.org
> Closer to MOP & ContextL:http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/

I'll take a stab at that.  I haven't played with Arc but I have read
what pg wrote before and after he released it.  pg's main design
principle in developing Arc was to make codebases as small as
possible.  To be able to write programs in the smallest possible
space.  He thinks that code compression is a virtue in itself and that
is the goal worth pursuing (Yegge agrees and says Lisp is best for
this).  Arc didn't introduce any new conceptual or technical marvels,
but it sounds like a lot of little things that add up to smaller
code.  So (aside from the success of applications written in Arc),
this is the standard that it should be judged against.

As far as why popularity, if pg's popularity and Arc can cut through
some of the "known" misconceptions about Lisp, then maybe we won't
have to re-explain and re-convince every single person that we're not
working with a dead, sluggish AI language from the 70s.
From: Pascal Costanza
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <6144jiF1t8d4bU2@mid.individual.net>
pchristensen wrote:

> I'll take a stab at that.  I haven't played with Arc but I have read
> what pg wrote before and after he released it.  pg's main design
> principle in developing Arc was to make codebases as small as
> possible.  To be able to write programs in the smallest possible
> space.  He thinks that code compression is a virtue in itself and that
> is the goal worth pursuing (Yegge agrees and says Lisp is best for
> this).  Arc didn't introduce any new conceptual or technical marvels,
> but it sounds like a lot of little things that add up to smaller
> code.  So (aside from the success of applications written in Arc),
> this is the standard that it should be judged against.

I think he make (made?) stronger claims than that. But if that's indeed 
all he claims, I'm fine with it.

> As far as why popularity, if pg's popularity and Arc can cut through
> some of the "known" misconceptions about Lisp, then maybe we won't
> have to re-explain and re-convince every single person that we're not
> working with a dead, sluggish AI language from the 70s.

Do you also mean misconceptions like "Lisp is slow because it's 
interpreted", "Lisp only provides lists as data types", and "Lisp is a 
functional programming language"?


Pascal

-- 
1st European Lisp Symposium (ELS'08)
http://prog.vub.ac.be/~pcostanza/els08/

My website: http://p-cos.net
Common Lisp Document Repository: http://cdr.eurolisp.org
Closer to MOP & ContextL: http://common-lisp.net/project/closer/
From: gavino
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <ec04dd17-7639-49ac-a080-2c8d3aa911b6@e23g2000prf.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 1:45 am, Rainer Joswig <······@lisp.de> wrote:
> In article <·························@cv.net>,
>  Ken Tilton <···········@optonline.net> wrote:
>
> > Get it?*:
>
> >http://beautifulcode.oreillynet.com/2008/02/arc_an_unappreciated_appr...
>
> Kenny, that's just a Blogger on one of their web sites.
> Do you actually care about O'Reilly? The last book I bought
> from them turned out to be a big mistake.
>
> Plus his post is full of errors. Example: The store was not written top
> to bottom in Lisp:
>
>  "Viaweb at first had two parts: the editor, written in Lisp,
>   which people used to build their sites, and the ordering system,
>   written in C, which handled orders. The first version was
>   mostly Lisp, because the ordering system was small.
>   Later we added two more modules, an image generator written
>   in C, and a back-office manager written mostly in Perl."
>
> Then the blog post:
>
>   'It is, instead, a very clean deliberately designed, close to the roots Lisp.'
>
> Haha! ROTFL!
>
>   'I don't know enough Lisp to be able to judge his efforts.'
>
> But enough to write the sentence above? It is about of the same level
> as 95% of the other posts on these topics: Low.
>
> Read Brucio instead!
>
>
>
> > That is favorable coverage of Lisp by a company that made a preemptive
> > strike against Lisp content.
>
> Still do. Though they publish 'Ruby' books.
>
>  The Ruby Programming Language,     $40
>  Ruby by Example,                   $30
>  Learning Ruby.                     $35
>  Ruby Cookbook                      $45
>  From Java to Ruby                  $30
>  Best of Ruby Quiz                  $30
>  Programming Ruby , Second Edition  $45
>  Ruby in a Nutshell                 $25
>
> Amazon sells Practical Common Lisp (Apress is the publisher)
> for $42.59. It is also freely available online as HTML and PDF.
> Peter's book is a good example for a modern Lisp book
> with interesting content and an interesting perspective.
> There is more space for Lisp books. In the last years
> quite a lot has happened in the Lisp world, which
> would be good material for one or two Lisp books.
> For example I could imagine that there is interest in
> a book which describes the implementation, installation and usage
> of the current open source Common Lisp implementations:
> SBCL, CMUCL, Clozure CL, CLISP, ECL.
>
>
>
> > Wow, first the Giants, now this. I guess next Anna Kournikova asks she
> > can come over to talk about her breakup with Julio.
>
> > kenny

O'reilly books bad, O'reilly newsguy good.

hey look at that ! http://www.merlintec.com/lsi/
From: John Thingstad
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <op.t53vtslyut4oq5@pandora.alfanett.no>
>
>   'It is, instead, a very clean deliberately designed, close to the  
> roots Lisp.'
>
> Haha! ROTFL!
>

I fail to see what is so funny about that.

--------------
John Thingstad
From: Xah Lee
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <60a622de-c0ff-4cb9-8f16-4f8652b75db0@l1g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>
I think newlisp is fantastic. And i don't really give a shit about
arc.

http://newlisp.org/

http://newlisp.org/index.cgi?page=Features

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewLISP

...

among the lisps, i care about emacs lisp, and i think Qi is a good
citizen.

I consider arc a asshole creation, and Scheme with its people and r6rs
motherfucking assholes.

See
 What Languages to Hate
 http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/language_to_hate.html

-----------------

lispers, please go promote NewLisp. If you write blogs, mention it.
And go to arc blogs and post about NewLisp.

  Xah
  ···@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/

☄
From: gavino
Subject: Re: Game Over: O'Reilly Does Lisp
Date: 
Message-ID: <fec132ae-2933-48a1-893e-e02cf2bcbdea@q77g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 6, 3:50 pm, Xah Lee <····@xahlee.org> wrote:
> I think newlisp is fantastic. And i don't really give a shit about
> arc.
>
> http://newlisp.org/
>
> http://newlisp.org/index.cgi?page=Features
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewLISP
>
> ...
>
> among the lisps, i care about emacs lisp, and i think Qi is a good
> citizen.
>
> I consider arc a asshole creation, and Scheme with its people and r6rs
> motherfucking assholes.
>
> See
>  What Languages to Hate
>  http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/language_to_hate.html
>
> -----------------
>
> lispers, please go promote NewLisp. If you write blogs, mention it.
> And go to arc blogs and post about NewLisp.
>
>   Xah
>   ····@xahlee.org
> ∑http://xahlee.org/
>
> ☄

xah has your anger made you powerful?