Subject: Re: newbie: non local exits in CL
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 1997/07/11
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3077622962637059@naggum.no>


* Laurent Peron
| Probably it does, but I am a bit perplexed by this new huge language I
| have just started learning.  It is not easy to make "the good usage" of a
| given form, macro, function, etc.

hm.  this was how I felt when I had to use C++, but not when I was learning
Common Lisp.  I sympathize strongly with the feeling that everything you do
could have been done better, but I think there is a difference between CL
and C++: I was actually afraid that what I did would break something
because I didn't do it the Right Way.  in C++, that's exactly what happens,
and many programmers spend a large amount of time frustrated because of it.
in CL, it only wastes resources, or you get thrown into the debugger, which
should be pretty reasonable choices.  (curiously, this fear of breaking
things seems to be the main threshold many people have towards computers in
the first place.  I was sort of ashamed to realize that I experienced when
I had to deal with C++.  but now I know it's because the computers people
fear and the languages programmers fear are just plain badly designed!)

perhaps indicative of the sorry state of the world, I have talked to C++
programmers who exhibit a fear of other languages for exactly this reason:
they think that every new language must be as hard to learn to do right as
the randomness of C++.  I haven't seen this fear in other languages, not
even C.  I have also seen a lot of C++ code that exhibit this fear, in that
the programmers sort of double check that things went well, especially
after the code has gained some age.

#\Erik
-- 
if DUI is "Driving Under the Influence"
then GUI must be "Graphics Under the Influence"