Subject: Re: What I want from my Common Lisp vendor and the Common Lisp community
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Sat, 01 Sep 2001 20:54:06 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3208366436720427@naggum.net>

* gat@flownet.com (Erann Gat)
> Yes, I understand that.  I say you're wrong.  Please try to pry your
> brain open just wide enough to grasp the possibility that not everyone
> who disagrees with you does so because they haven't understood what
> you're trying to say.

  I find it rather curious that you think this approach will work.

> Hogwash, as is easily demonstrated: Listen up, everyone!  Java sucks
> big fat weenies!  No go and see if anyone is abandoning Java as a
> result of my overwhelming negativism.

  This is particularly mature to be you, but still does nothing to falsify
  my conclusions about your general immaturity and lack of intelligence.

  Are you a strong and vocal member of the Java community, Erann Gat?  Do
  you post this immature filth in Java newsgroups?  If you are not, what
  was that again about "pry open your brain"?  Do you think anyone will
  _listen_ to such immature crap?  Any random idiot can flame at that level
  without consequence.  It is substantial criticism based on a different
  agenda than that which was underlying the design of the language that is
  the problem.  Some people hate Common Lisp for not being Scheme, but they
  cloak their "criticism" in such a way as to make people believe that
  Common Lisp is inherently flawed.  One needs to be unusually intelligent
  to be able to figure out what these nutballs really have a problem with.

  If Guy Steele or James Gosling or Bill Joy went on record to say they
  think "Java sucks big fat weenies" (or preferably something intelligent)
  to the Java community, do you think that would make it slightly more
  interesting than that a fairly immature little runt like you does it
  here?  If you do not understand this point, you really _have_ not
  understood anything.

> Again, hogwash.  I used Common Lisp for twenty years pretty much to
> the eclusion of all other languages.  I loved most of it, hated some
> of it, felt neutral about some of it, and some of it I simply never
> understood.  I used the parts I loved, ignored the parts I hated to
> the extent possible (the package system was hard to avoid), and
> struggled with the parts I didn't understand.

  And you still do not understand that the fact that you ignore the parts
  you hate is just what makes you a little different from the people who
  post long and painfully disturbed messages about what they hate about the
  language, and keep arguing against the language and the standard and the
  standardization process because they were once "spurned" by it?

> The world is full of hollowness and insincerity.  So what?

  Just the kind of commentary I expect from you.

> Some of what you call hollowness and insincerity I call civility, and I
> think it's a feature.

  I have long suspected that that would be the operating definition of your
  civility, but thank you for making it clear to us all.

> Love and hate are two extremes on a continuum, not a binary choice.

  Really?  Thank you for sharing such a profoundly important insight!

> BTW, the hollowest and insincerest people I know are the faith healers,
> whose rhetoric sounds a lot like yours, but with "Jesus" substituted for
> "Lisp": "There are those who claim to love Jesus, but who continue to
> live lives of sin.  These people do not truly love the Lord Jesus."

  Again, this is a very powerful reflection your life and life experiences.
  I am so glad I have nothing of your life experiences to drag me down.  It
  would be awful.

  Pull yourself together and engage your brain, Erann Gat.  The stupidity
  you posted so far only indicates that you are going nuts very quickly.

///