Subject: Re: LISP format (happy to read) From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Fri, 23 Nov 2001 16:57:24 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3215523442017539@naggum.net> * Cad Bilbao | Is it very important???? I'd prefer my annotation, because | I come from Java and C++... Yes, it is just as important as not ending Java/C++ bodies with }}}}}. You are writing in Common Lisp, now. If you continue to write in Java or C++, may I suggest that you get a compiler that agrees with that choice? I cannot _fathom_ what people are thinking when they start to use a new programming language but are so stuck in their old programming language that they have stopped listening to their surroundings and have stopped taking in new information very relevant to their ability to learn the new language. I do not understand why people think their past conclusions and observations are _fundamentally_ more important than their future conclusions and observations, either. And why does this happen so often to programmers in explicitly and statically typed languages? Is it because they are used to, indeed _need_ to, put a seal on all the new information that keeps coming in, in order not to keep changing the code and the class hierarchies and whatnot, because no matter when you design these things, it is overspecified and premature? This may be such an ingrained psychological factor that it may not even be conscious, but then it is even more annoying. It may be one of the hardest thing to unlearn from an old language, because it is such an unspoken thing that it is mainly learned from fear and frustration, but even if that is the case, it _should_ dawn on people that these feelings are out of place in a better language. Instead, Common Lisp programmers have to deal with the very annoying habit of immigrants from other programming languages to want to pretend they are still living in their old cultures. Sigh. /// -- Norway is now run by a priest from the fundamentalist Christian People's Party, the fifth largest party representing one eighth of the electorate. -- Carrying a Swiss Army pocket knife in Oslo, Norway, is a criminal offense.