cartercc <cartercc@gmail.com> wrote:
+---------------
| > Then skip it and do something else.
| 
| Yeah, but you have to learn something well enough to use it before you
| can evaluate it. That's like learning to play a scale on a musical
| instrument and then giving it up because you don't see yourself making
| music. Masters of anything (and everything) will tell you that the
| ration of perspiration to inspiration is about 10 to 1, if not 100 to 1.
+---------------

Hah! You have just made the very point so many people have been trying to
get you to see, and yet you *still* don't see it!! Yes, you're absolutely
correct: "You have to learn something well enough to use it before you
can evaluate it." And in the case of programming languages, the only way
you can learn one *is* to use it. [If that sounds recursive, well, it is.
You learn a little, you try to use what you've learned. That shows you
the next thing you need to learn, then you try using that. And so on.]

You *CANNOT* learn a language well enough to evaluate it without actually
programming at least a handful of *significant* (not toy) tasks in it,
any more than you can learn to play Bach without ever touching a keyboard.
Reading/discussing/criticizing/comparing musics is not *playing* music.
So *GET MOVING*!! As Kenny is so fond of saying [quite correctly, albeit
bluntly], "Shut up & code."

And then when you have real problems with your Lisp code, I assure you
that if you come back here and present what you've tried so far and say
what you expected it to do and also what it *did* do [including the exact
error message(s), if any, from your implementation] and why you think it
failed to meet your expectation, you will find this community more than
willing to help you with your code: helpful in explaining obscure nuances
of the ANSI Common Lisp Standard; helpful in suggesting better Lisp "style";
helpful in suggesting alternative algorithms.

Until then, however, do not be surprised if you continue to be treated
as a troll...


-Rob

-----
Rob Warnock			<rpw3@rpw3.org>
627 26th Avenue			<URL:http://rpw3.org/>
San Mateo, CA 94403		(650)572-2607