Subject: Re: Allegro compilation warnings
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: 2000/10/12
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3180342535878529@naggum.net>

* Mario Frasca
| the most irritating ones are of this format
| 
| Warning: Free reference to undeclared variable *PRECISION* assumed special.
|          This symbol may have been intended: IDEAL::*PRECISION*.
| 
| most of them don't include the second line.
| 
| any suggestion on what to do to give the compiler as much information
| as it needs so that it won't complain any more?

  Well, why don't you declare/define your global variables?

| less disturbing are the ones:
| Warning: Variable X-DUMMY is never used.

  So why is it there?

  Instead of being "irritated" and "disturbed" and making references
  to another language, why not try to program in the language at hand?
  The warnings you get indicate that you are still thinking in another
  language and your irritation communicates that you don't intend to
  stop doing that because you think it is somehow correct to think in
  C++ and write in Common Lisp.  What I want to know is how you began
  to think in C++ in the first place.  Or is it that that experience
  has taught you that being irritated at computers and languages is
  the best approach because nothing else really works any better?

  (You're not the first C++ or Microsoft victim to believe this, and
  it sometimes takes a long time for people with that background to
  get the same kind of warm and calming sensation that the world of
  computers can be understood and mastered without mystery and pain
  that comes to people who understand the laws of physics and don't
  swear at the physical world when it doesn't obey their wishes.
  What's so fucking irritating is that those who lack that calmness
  make so many incredibly retarded decisions and statements that only
  do one thing: perpetuate the mystery and pain for all others.  The
  best approach is to get a suitable hand-gun and use your Microsoft
  and C++ books for target practice.  That gives you control, again.
  Then start anew with a real language and tools intended for people
  to use, not whatever semi-evolved simian the commercials work on.)

#:Erik
-- 
  I agree with everything you say, but I would
  attack to death your right to say it.
				-- Tom Stoppard