Subject: Re: $350.00 ANSI standard? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1997/04/01 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3068842384756048@naggum.no> * Lewis Stiller | It apparently costs US $350.00 to buy a copy of the ANSI Lisp standard | (www.ansi.org). At first I thought this was impossible, that I was | misreading, but I am told that it is true. (The C standard is "only" | $130.00). yeah, so? (thanks, Will.) the Common Lisp HyperSpec, published by Harlequin, is a hypertext version of the standard on the Net, including the X3J13 committee issues. I use both the HyperSpec and the paper version daily. if you don't know how something is supposed to work, you will necessarily use it wrongly. if you know exactly how a language works, you will not be bothered by its restrictions, no matter which language, but can, instead, focus on expressing yourself completely within it. it is nigh impossible to come to peace with the specification for most programming languages, so the value of having the standard as your guide is underappreciated until you realize that money cannot buy what that document contains. we spend a large fraction of our lives getting very expensive education, then we take jobs that require enormous sacrifices of our selves. many buy homes with money thus earned. all are investments in future stability. all are deemed natural and necessary in a civilized society. much of our political ideas revolve around stability. the standard specification of a programming language is the embodiment of such stability for the employment of a programmer's skills. only on stable ground are you free to roam. visit the Common Lisp HyperSpec at http://www.harlequin.com/books/HyperSpec/ #\Erik -- I'm no longer young enough to know everything.