Subject: Re: the "loop" macro From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2001 23:44:36 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3208031073980045@naggum.net> * John Foderaro <jkf@xspammerx.franz.com> > You guys make it sounds like the ANSI CL standard was handed down by God > and it dare not be criticized. Like most criminals who suddenly get this great political insight into the law-making process when they get caught, you, too, confuse breaking community standards with criticizing them. If you had criticized them while upholding them, you would have gained respect and people would have listened to you, because it would have meant that you would have followed the _changing_ consensus and would be interested in helping build it. Instead, you have a criminal mind, are a loose cannon and a person who decides on his own when to uphold the laws and when to break them. This is what a society of laws cannot tolerate in its citizens and community based on a standard cannot tolerate in its members. You, sir, have no business talking about criticizing any standards, because you obviously would not follow a _changed_ standard, either, unless, of course, it was your own, in which case the whole point of a standard is moot. > It's not only our right to criticize it it's our *responsibility*. The > language will never get better if we don't. Most civilized people understand the difference between obeying the laws while criticizing them and breaking them in a childish expression of one's inability to articulate sufficiently thoughtful arguments to sway those of a different mind to rethink their position and reach compromise. > Some are so blinded by faith that they believe that everything in the CL > spec is divine. You should realize that this statement is a very grave insult to your own intelligence and has absolutely no bearing on what anyone else thinks or believes, simply because it is such a fucking insane thing to say. > The fact is that it was designed by committee. It was a compromise. Not > everything in it is a great idea, or even a good idea. _Some_ of us prefer to live in a society where people respect each other for their competence and professionalism despite their differences of personal opinions and work through their conflicting desires within the framework of compromise and imposed ritual, simply because we fully understand what the alternative entails. These are among the wider implications of your nutty "coding standards", and people who are way smarter than you figured it out just reading them. The wider implication of your incredibly stupid disrespect for compromise is that you fully expect to _remain_ a stranger to the community. You do not respect the fact that compromise is what makes it possible for lots of people to work together for a common goal. That means that you do not share in the common goal. With your disrespect for criticism of your ways and your repetition of the exact same line of defense as last time we fought over conformance, you have shown ourself to be an _enemy_ of the common goal of those who base their work, money, and livelihood on the standard and the ability of professional engineers to implement it. I doubt that you will actually get the message, but it is not that you do something different, it is that you are so hostile to the ways you think you have improved upon. Case in point: I quit the SGML business when I could no longer work with that stupid standard. I can rant and rave freely about its braindamaged design and do any damn thing I please, _because_ I quit working with SGML. No customers are harmed because of my strong criticism of SGML and XML. Nobody has based their work and their investments on my professional opinion about SGML for five years. It is safe for me to be destructive to that community, because those who might follow me are free to do so. I did _not_ make a huge public stink about why SGML was a crock of shit when I quit, either. That would have been seriously unprofessional and damaging personally to people I cared about and who had cared about me. Actually finding a decent way out took me half a year, but I knew I could no longer be part of that community and I took that very seriously, both personally and professionally. However, in your case, you are still a serious force within a serious vendor serving this community. Your stupidity and reckless disregard for your customers and those who still trust Franz Inc to deliver products according to specification _will_ harm people and their investments. This is not about IF* and LOOP, it is about whether Franz Inc will have engineers working on their products who are professional enough to do a good job implementing a standard they disagree with. I would frankly want a vendor who agreed with me that the standard was good for me. This is why I could not use CLISP, for instance -- its arrogant, nutty creator went on record to tell the world he had broken things on purpose. > The sad thing is that the religious zealots seem to have taken over this > newsgroup (or at least they are the loudest). I laugh at them and I hope > you do too. I hope that I can get a message through to the scientists > out there who understand that CL is just a language with good points and > bad points and that we must figure out how to make CL better and > continually relevant to the current computing world. > > -john foderaro > franz inc. Signing that moronic, self-serving "to hell with the community" crap with the Franz Inc company name makes it _much_ harder for me to work with Franz Inc, and I am already strained because of your licensing policies. I think you fail to appreciate the harm you do to your own livelihood with the _unprofessional_ behavior you conduct in public when people criticize _your_ supposedly "personal" opinions, which really are not at all personal. They are your professional opinions, and while signing with the Franz Inc company name, you indicate that if anybody wants to deal with your company and with you professionally, they will also have to deal with a company that goes public with a "fuck the standard" attitude that I personally consider to be so amazingly self-destructive that I have to question my involvement with Franz Inc because of it. It was your retarded responses to the case issue that caused me to lose much of my interest in helping Franz Inc the last time you aired your stupid ego in this newsgroup, and I am frankly so disappointed with your reckless lack of concern for the community and what it has agreed on that I am probably not going to recommend that anyone I know use Allegro CL or work with such an _unprofessional_ crowd as you imply that Franz Inc is by signing with the company name. I know your position in the company well, and I am loathe to give you business when I believe that by doing so, I am helping you destroy the community I wish to be a part of. When this case issue came up, and you did such a horribly unintelligent job of it, I lost all trust in your code. I do not know which language you really write your code in, but it is _not_ Common Lisp, and you will not cater to those who want to use Common Lisp. You have demonstrated that you will disregard the standard in favor of your own personal opinions, and that is simply so _unprofessional_ that I cannot work with in _any_ professional capacity. Just like when you blew it on the case issue and never realized what harm you had done, this is another sad day for Common Lisp. If I were in posititon to determine your employment with Franz Inc, I would fire you because of the destructiveness you bring to the community, but I am not in that position. I will, however, need to know from those who are, what Franz Inc does to keep you away from those parts of its product line that could be influenced by your utter disrespect for the community standard that your customers want you to implement. I have been on your case as long as I have worked with Franz Inc to ensure that conformance is an issue, but as time goes on, that commitment is hollowed out by you in particular, despite the valiant efforts of your colleagues to assure me that conformance is a priority. Yet, you seem to take _pride_ in your antisocial behavior and your disrespect for compromise so I leave you no hope of recovery and will have to work around you if I continue to work with Franz Inc, which I am, right now, inclined to terminate, but I will calm down and consider a _compromise_ because there are things Franz Inc does very well that I want both myself and my clients to benefit from. In the spirit of your disdain for compromise, however, I am not going to compromise on your position. If Allegro CL is to be seen as a viable implementation of Common Lisp, as defined by the community you hate in the standards document you hate, Franz Inc will have to do some serious damage control measures to convince people that you had no opportunity to break anything people will rely on in production systems. I do not understand what this is _really_ about, but if you really wish to self-destruct, please be _decent_ enough to do it away from people. If anyone else had so many personal issues with the standard as you do, I would have urged them to leave and find something else to do. I quit working with SGML over less than you seem to cling to in Common Lisp. And I hope for your personal sanity that you can afford your laughter. ///