Re: How to improve the readability of (any) LISP or any highlevel functional language to the level of FORTH ?

[Tim X]

Tim Bradshaw <tfb@tfeb.org> writes:

> On 2011-01-04 08:02:35 +0000, Tim Harig said:
>
>>      LISP users on the other hand, never seem to be able to let
>>      go of LISP when the situation requires it.
>
> I think this probably is not the case.  It may be the case that the Lisp users
> *you hear from* often have this view, but I don't think those people are
> necessarily very representative of Lisp users as a whole.  Of course I can't
> really infer much about the ones you don't hear from other than in a sort of
> dark-energy way - implementors are probably the only people who might have a
> chance of knowing about them in any reliable way.
>
> For instance, I've been berated by the users you hear from for saying I write
> (and like writing) Perl and (but not like very much) Java.  I don't think that
> makes me an atypical Lisp user, I just think it makes me one of the few who 
> are
> in the subset of Lisp users that you hear from and who will admit to using
> other langages.
>

I would add that it is a mistake to judge a community of users based on
a single forum. For example, many have complained about comp.lang.lisp
and it is often viewed as being the lisp community. In reality, it is
only a very small representation of lisp users from a single forum.
There are many other lisp forums with varying levels of acceptance,
hostility, dogma, experience, cynicism etc. 

Judging the lisp community by what goes on in c.l.l is like stopping at
some remote town in the hills where everyone has the same nose and
concluding it is a national trait. 

Personally, I enjoy c.l.l as I can easily recognise the threads to kill
and those which are likely to have some interesting information. Sure,
we may throw a few fists and end up rolling around in the pig shit from
time to time and sometimes one of the cousins may drink a bit much
'shine and probably should'nt pull out the shotgun, but what can you do,
its family. 


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au