Subject: Re: Packages From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net> Date: Sun, 17 Mar 2002 13:27:03 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3225360434943008@naggum.net> * Thomas Bushnell, BSG | So he must like everything about it, or he's against it? It is the other way around. Only those who are against it, express their dislike of it. Those who are for it, think in a very different way: "It would be even better if ...". The difference between dislike and like less than some hypothetical situation can seem hard to grasp, but think of a line, with zero in the middle. Dislike is on the left of the zero. Like is on the right of the zero. "Like less than some hypothetical" ought to have both on the right of the zero, and that is certainly the case for "it would be even better if ...". But in effect, yes, one's opinion of all features of something one has chosen to work with and wishes to become proficient and productive in should all be on the positive side. That does mean that one has to defend them all or that one does not prefer one way over another, perhaps never using a feature, but active dislike is so psychologically destructive that you have people constantly complain about it instead of just getting over it and on with their lives. You and Erann Gat keep bad-mouthing Common Lisp all the time. To those who wish to become proficient and productive in Common Lisp, this is actually really destructive. It is like going to a bar with your friends and haveing to suffer someone who berates something or other about your girlfriend or wife or kids or cat or perhaps your car or your job or your house or whatever _all_ the time. This pisses most people off _tremendously_, to the point where people actually resort to violence to make the shitheads shut up or leave. For a community like ours, it is like having someone come to a bar regularly only to whine about the beer or the hygiene or the furniture or the decorations or the bartender or whatever. That someone would be beaten up if he refused to leave the others in peace to enjoy themselves. Common decency strongly suggests that such naysayers and shitheads just get the hell out of the place, but for some reason, shitheads like you and Erann Gat keep coming to the same bar and keep deriding and denigrating something that a lot of the people there actually come there _because_ they like. Now, to keep this metaphor, everybody will appreciate a suggestion to make something better if they perceive it to be in good will, i.e., with respect for what has already been done, but if your suggestion is not adopted, it is very _rude_ to keep suggesting it over and over (no matter how politely it has been suggested) To change the scene a little: If someone should argue that your cat would look a lot better with short hair, the only appropriate answer is that then it would have to be a different cat. To really make you destructive shitheads realize what you are doing, suppose you talked to a black guy in the highly racially sensitized United States and told him that he would probably be a much better person if he were white. That probably overstates the case a little, but having you and Erann Gat and shitheads like you around here to rag Common Lisp all the time is extremely unwelcome. And the message I keep trying to send to you obnoxious assholes is just that: Get the fuck out of here if all you come here to do is deride and berate and denigrate the _one_ common interest to the people in this forum. People will generally listen to your problems and try to help you if you have a constructive purpose to some frustration or other, but if all you want to do is complain that what you want to do is not perfectly acceptable and you do not _want_ a solution, people _will_ tire of you, some more quickly than others. /// -- In a fight against something, the fight has value, victory has none. In a fight for something, the fight is a loss, victory merely relief.