Steve Furlong <furlos@alumni.rpi.edu> wrote:
+---------------
| Rob Warnock <rpw3@rigden.engr.sgi.com> wrote:
| >Also see Robert Heinlein's short story "The Lazy, Lazy Man"...
| 
| Eh? I thought I'd read everything of RAH's, but this doesn't strike
| a bell. Are you referrring to "The Tale of the Man Who Was too Lazy
| to Fail" in _Time_Enough_for_Love_?
+---------------
 
Could be, and if so, I apologize for the mangled reference. (I can't
easily check right now since my copy of "Time Enough For Love" is in
a box in the garage -- I know, I know, for shame!) 

In any case [to bring this back to Lisp], the potential for a significant
tradeoff between "thinking" and "working" is one of the things I like about
Lisp (and Scheme). It sometimes seems to me that design in the presence of
a decent macro system involves a kind of search for a minimum of effort:
if you don't think enough, you "work stupid", and if you think *too* much
up front, you never finish. But somewhere in between...


-Rob

[p.s. Apologies in advance: Email'd replies may get
a "vacation" bounce message while I'm on sabbatical...]

-----
Rob Warnock, 8L-855		rpw3@sgi.com
Applied Networking		http://reality.sgi.com/rpw3/
Silicon Graphics, Inc.		Phone: 650-933-1673
2011 N. Shoreline Blvd.		FAX: 650-964-0811
Mountain View, CA  94043	PP-ASEL-IA