Subject: Re: Great Lisp Programmer Shortage?
From: rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com (Rob Warnock)
Date: 1996/10/31
Newsgroups: comp.ai,comp.lang.lisp,comp.os.msdos.programmer,comp.lang.asm.x86
Message-ID: <559ak8$f9c@tokyo.engr.sgi.com>

Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@goanna.cs.rmit.edu.au> wrote:
+---------------
| The "strong" Whorf-Sapir hypothesis ("POSSIBLE to think" = "possible to
| say") is false.
| The "weak" Whorf-Sapir hypothesis ("EASY to think" = "easy to say")
| is pretty much obvious.
+---------------

True, but to me the more interesting/useful form is the contrapositive
of the "weak" version [the "pretty-strong" version?] -- "If it can't
be said easily in any language one knows, it's quite difficult for one
to think or reason about it" -- which I would claim *does* have considerable
applicability to the art of programming [not to mention a myriad of
personal/religious/philosphical contemplations].

After all, one of the beauties of Lisp/Scheme programming is that if
you're having trouble trying to cleanly express something, you can
CHANGE THE LANGUAGE to make it easier to express.


-Rob

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Rob Warnock, 7L-551		rpw3@sgi.com
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