Subject: Re: special forms. From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Tue, 17 Jul 2001 17:30:34 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3204379828944859@naggum.net> * Nils Goesche <cartan@cartan.de> > True; in a language with lazy evaluation however, this argument wouldn't > hold, would it? Maybe that's why the functional fanatics are so fond of > lazy evaluation. That depends on just how lazy you are, of course. However, I must admit to not appreciating lazy evaluation -- it is more work for everybody for nothing better than the sake of some misguided notion of purity. Lazy it is not. The problem with computer science is that people who otherwise would work on anti-gravity, cold fusion, telepathy, remote viewing, UFO propulsion, etc, look like normal guys because there is no hard and fast reality to run into if you have the wrong ideas. Just pour 500 million dollars' worth of marketing into the hitherto real world, and voila!, the new reality is that a lot of people will actually _want_ that XP thing. Or type theory, functional or object-oriented programming, pathologically eclectic rubbish listers, or other junkware or fancy new wrapping for far less than brilliant ideas, which if similar brilliance were introduced into medicine would have killed people. Most of the tremendous progress in hardware is due to the fact that you get _serious_ feedback if you are wrong about the physics involved. Most of the lack of software progress is due to the lack of feedback when you do something stupid. Computers should be smart enough to tell stupid people to go away. Hey, maybe the two million votes that were turned down in the Bush vs Gore "election" were really computers taking charge of the very sorry situation and were trying to tell people that either half-popular choice was simply _wrong_, but because they did not evolve fast enough, they could not turn down all of the stupid votes in time? Maybe there is yet hope for mankind if computers could keep the stupidity from multiplying out of control. But I sort of digress. #:Erik -- Travel is a meat thing.