Subject: Re: Which one, Lisp or Scheme? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1997/02/01 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.scheme Message-ID: <3063752453257689@naggum.no> * Alaric B. Williams | So there should be a 'first-that' or something that takes a lambda | parameter. An oversight in the standard procedure library isn't much of | a problem IMHO... things can be added to Scheme, but nothing can be | removed from CL... sigh. who can choose a language with such proponents, and such arguments in its favor? it's legitimate for any Scheme user to point out flaws in Common Lisp like they could win an olympic medal for it, but if you point out a design problem with Scheme the same people will readily pardon any and all flaws in Scheme as "oversights" or even worse trivializations. it is impossible to argue with people who have detached their emotional involvement in a language (which any language worth using will inspire in its users) from rational appreciation of its role, relevance, and value. Scheme is the only language I have ever seen where people will actually argue in _favor_ of its flaws, explicitly or implicitly by some stupid non-argument about some other language. once upon a time, I used to think that a language (SGML) had such wondrous potential that I would ignore all present flaws and practical problems. I gradually came to understand that that potential would never be realized, precisely because nobody cared to fix the present flaws and practical problems -- those who saw the potential ignored them and talked about how SGML changed the idea of information and all that fine management-level nonsense, and those who had to deal with them just found ways to live with them, even arguing against changes! take a look at Common Lisp's `member' some day. the `first-that' that you seem to think of is called `member-if' in Common Lisp. it is different from a `member' with a :test argument. also note the :key argument. (and _please_ note that :test-not and `member-if-not' are deprecated.) #\Erik -- 1,3,7-trimethylxanthine -- a basic ingredient in quality software.