Subject: Re: is Lisp used in text parsing and processing tasks? From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 18 Nov 2002 01:13:14 +0000 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3246570794403551@naggum.no> * Paolo Amoroso | What's amazing is not much that students make mistakes like the ones | mentioned in this thread. I am more suprised by the fact that they do such | mistakes after being exposed to a usually large number of--hopefully--good | and idiomatic code samples. | | How much attention do they pay to _reading_ those examples? Shouldn't | the "cut and paste" mindset be of some help here? Bad habits spread like | wildfire, but there's a sort of psychological barrier to copying good | ones. The problem is that some people can learn something only once. They are only malleable while they are truly unexposed. Show them something, and the impression it makes causes anything that could occupy the same space later to be rejected. If they later learn that their first impression was wrong, the result is only that they reject everything, which makes them insecure and suspicious. To make matters worse, I believe this to be the default programming mode of the brain and that it requires directed effort -- also known as /thinking/ -- to override the default behavior. -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.