Subject: Re: What I want from my Common Lisp vendor and the Common Lisp community
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Sun, 02 Sep 2001 07:36:38 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3208404998010473@naggum.net>

* Erann Gat
> I stand by my broader point though.  I disagree with Erik's claim that
> what Lisp needs is for people to express their unconditional love for it.
> I say what Lisp needs is for people to use it to build cool stuff and
> beat the pants off their competition.

  Sigh.  The point with the love-your-language part was that people do not
  use the language for anything at all when they are mostly depressed about
  its lack of use and prominent people in the community beat it up all the
  time for personal reasons.  You have yet to explain how people start to
  use something they do not use.  I do not think you understand how people
  _decide_ to use something.  My offer of an explanation is that people who
  love their language and get an up-beat, optimistic attitude about it,
  also use it.  Obviously, this does not apply to you, who continue to
  prefer to be depressive and down-beat and just whine that people should
  use it.  Do you have any clue at all what could _propel_ people to use
  Common Lisp to build cool stuff and beat the pants off their competition?
  It does not look like you do, since you keep repeating that incredibly
  obvious and vacuous line only because you want to beat me over the head
  for personal reasons.

> Whether they are motivated by love or something else is immaterial.

> I'll take a Paul Graham over an Erik Naggum any day.

  I can beat that.  I would take John Foderaro over Erann Gat any day.  :)

> Whatever damage Paul does to Common Lisp by saying it sucks is more than
> offset by his publicizing the fact that he got rich using it.

  Really?  That is the part that I highly doubt.  It is precisely that Paul
  Graham debunks Common Lisp _after_ he succeeded with it that is so
  depressing to other Common Lisp users.  It makes it an _accident_ that he
  got rich using Common Lisp.  He would have gotten rich using just about
  anything else, or so it seems.

> If we had ten Paul Grahams we wouldn't even be having this discussion.
> Lisp would be thriving.  If we had ten Erik Naggums... nah, too scary to
> contemplate.  (But if we had two Erik Naggums, now that would be
> interesting ;-)

  You are such an idiot, Erann Gat.  This is all so _personal_ to you.  Get
  some professional help to _get over_ your personal problems.  USENET is
  not a good place to engage in therapy sessions the way you keep doing.  I
  mean that seriously.  Bring print-outs of your articles to a shrink and
  he will tell you that you have a problem you _can_ get help to get out of.

///