Subject: Re: Macros and eval From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/06/09 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3137890856326428@naggum.no> * Eric Scott | 1) Am I going to hell? * Kent M Pitman | Do not think about programming as a religion. Religious dogma has no | place in programming decisions. I object. "good", "evil", "heaven", and "hell" are perfectly legitimate programming terms. it's a pity that the early programmers of humans made it appear they are religious terms. "good" is when what you have done leads to less work (even though it may be a lot of work). "evil" is when what you have done leads to more work (especially when it is very little work at first). "heaven" is when your program behaves well, your users are content, and every change you make has fully predictable consequences and changes only what it should change: the result of "good" programming. "hell" is when your program fails, your users despair, and every change you make is not only wrong, but can not be predicted in how and where the wrongness will manifest itself: the result of "evil" programming. e.g., C++ is virtually pure evil. Bill Gates and his entire company is in hell because of evil programming in BASIC and C++, and all kinds of evil monsters are hoisted upon users from this hell: viruses, general protection failures, blue screens, licenses and patents, forced upgrades, backward incompatibility disservice packs, DLL interdependencies -- the list goes on and on. a number of these are _literally_ from hell, it's not just a feeling anymore. once in hell there is no salvation, save to stop programming and using evil computers and software from hell. if you are engaging in evil programming practices, you do not necessarily go to hell, but you have to absolve yourself through purifying punishment, like reading the manual. and when the lambda opened the seventh seal, silence covered the sky. hey, this could work. help make this religious dogma for humans in general, and _then_ maybe we can get rid of C++ and all of Microsoft's evil software! (nothing short of a new religion will, I'm afraid.) #:Erik -- @1999-07-22T00:37:33Z -- pi billion seconds since the turn of the century