Re: Troll-o-Matic

Dear c.l.l.,

here is a brief first installment of the proposed Troll-o-Matic.
It deals with non-technical questions, I will look at the stuff
suggested by other participants next. Feel free to mail or post
comments. Regards Tin

----8<----- CUT HERE ----------------------------------->8------

The Compleat Troller's Guide To C.L.L.


This document is intended for people interested in potentially
controversial questions regarding the Lisp programming language. Since
these questions are sure-fire hits for stirring up a commotion on
comp.lang.lisp, using such cheap gimmicks to make participants on
c.l.l. angry is considered bad taste, unsportsy and poor trolling.
This document is written in the hope that it will improve trolling
quality on c.l.l. If you plan to troll on c.l.l. in interesting and
achieved ways, this document is for you. It is not a HOW-TO, though,
it is a HOW-NOT-TO. BE CREATIVE, BE INNOVATIVE.

=== A note to the c.l.l. regulars

Although the following suggestions apply to all newsgroups
universally, comp.lang.lispniks in particular are asked to be tolerant
towards newbies and idiots whenever possible. Lazyness, impatience and
lack of mental capabilities are part of the human condition, but so is
delight in sharing and teaching. Getting worked up over waste of
bandwidth in a newsgroup creates more waste of bandwidth. A stupid
rookie question might be answered by a slightly less stupid rookie who
is glad to help out. The idiot who is unable to use google might be
well served by another participant who *can* use google and is still
enthusiastic enough to help out. If you see a trivial technical
question, try to ignore it. It takes two to fan poor trolling and you
probably DO NOT WANT TO PARTICIPATE IN SUCH NONSENSE.




=== "Lisp sucks"

Saying that X sucks on a newsgroup named comp.lang.X is the safest,
and thus cheapest way of starting a flamewar. It goes without saying
that "Lisp sucks" is very poor trolling. Not even refininig your
thesis to "Lisp sucks because..." makes it any better. Your
observation that is the cause for your conclusion that Lisp sucks
might be correct, but it does not mean that Lisp in general sucks. For
example, you might be correct in noticing that Lisp uses more "(" and
")" parantheses than other programming languages, and it might also be
correct that it drives YOU crazy. Inferring from this that Lisp sucks
is NOT necessarily a universal concept. Whether a particular feature
or lack thereof really contributes to Lisp's perceived suckage might
be a matter of interpretation or preferences. Some participants might
consider the feature or lack thereof a /good thing/. Personal
experiences and technical sophistication vary, so there is not always
a last word on how or if things could be improved. Moreover, Lisp has
the undeserved reputation of lacking some features when in fact it
does not. Classic examples are "lack of compound data types other than
lists: arrays, structures, etc." Many such allegations are urban
myths, so you should make sure that Lisp really lacks the feature you
miss. A significant part of the "Lisp FAQ" is dedicated to those urban
myths, so you should read it before trolling on c.l.l. Otherwise you
are in danger of getting the deserved reputation of being a cheap
troll. Some c.l.lispniks might reprieve you to "idiot", but you might
not consider this an improvement. People acting in good faith because
they are unaware of the explosive trolling power of some Lisp issues
are usually not exempt. READ THE FAQ.



=== "Lisp gives you a hard time"

More often than not, this observation relates to a specific Common
Lisp package, not Lisp's syntactical peculiarities. As pointed out by
many seminal documents, it's the syntactical peculiarities that give
Lisp its power. This fact is well understood by most people interested
in Lisp and not further discussed here. However, many a newbie's
enthusiasm evaporates when they find out that they can't make their
desired open source package work for their preferred Common Lisp
implementation. Venting frustration over usability issues or
documentation gaps is a fool-proof route to interrupting civilized
conversation and infuriate the audience, so it is strongly
discouraged. If you have problems with a certain open-source Lisp
package you should make sure you that google or the package's mailing
list can't answer your question. If it is difficult to find the
information you need or you have to fix something, but you do find or
fix it, comtemplate documenting the process somewhere to make Lisp
easier to use for other people. Lisp newbies who have experience with
other open source programming languages will probably find that using
packages for things like the web, threads, regular expressions or OS
interfacing are harder to use than their corresponding modules for
java, perl, python or PHP, for example. Although such an observiation
might be correct in your particular case, it is not necessarily true
for all Lisp implementations or equivalent open-source packages in
general. Moreover, commercial Lisp implementors put considerable
effort into their packages for the web, threads, OS interfacing and
the like. Even if you are not complaining about your bad experience,
merely pointing out that it's all much easier in perl or python or
java you will be perceived as
* stating the obvious.
* whiny.
* wrong because it's all a no-brainer in Allegro Common Lisp
* a troll.
* all of the above.

With ridiculously little effort, the debate over "hard to use" topics
can be escalated to all sorts of stereotypical flamewars fanning out
into various subthreads concerning the legitimacy of lazyness,
whinyness, elitism or idiocy. Usually these threads are not an
interesting read for regular c.l.lispniks because the points and
counterpoints have been repeated so often. Sometimes a regular
participant jumps into such a discussion out of sheer boredom and
rants in frustration with poor trolling and wants his bandwidth back.
Don't let that happen. Before bringing up a "hard to use" issue you
should read the following sections to make sure that it has not been
comprehensively covered by previous debates and is thus part of this
document. USE GOOGLE, BE POLITE.




=== "Lisp is hard to use because it is
=== less popular than more popular programming languages"

Again, you might make this statement in good faith, expressing concern
over Lisp's obscurity and the benefits to usability, documenation and
"infrastructure" that come with wide adoption of a programming
language, especially in the world of open source software. You might
feel that, if Lisp had as many users as python, it's packages might be
as easy to use as perl's. You might wax philosophically on how neat
that would be. Your good-natured motives have no influence on the
effects of your post, however, because they disappoint the audience
just as much. Obscurity and misunderstandings have been with Lisp
since its inception in 1959 and have been talked about, whished about,
punned about and ranted about exhaustively, not only on c.l.l. The
statement that many hands make light work, that a larger user-base is
better for everyone in that user-base, that a larger mindshare means
more jobs -- all these and similiar statements are platitudes even
pointy-haired bosses have learned in the meantime. Re-iterating
PHB-wisdom on c.l.l. does not make you appear wit or original, and
other participants will take the liberty to remind you to this clear
fact. This means that defending your motive in the midst of a flamewar
with "but all I wanted to say is that, if only..." is highly
uneffective because it gets you more flak and lowers trolling qualitiy
to zero asymptotically. A typical continuation to this defense is an
argument over perceived, or real elitism in lispnik circles. DO NOT
PLAY THE "LISP IS HARD TO USE"-card. Elitism gets us to the next
section. "Lisp is hard to use and arrogant elitists who consider this
a good thing are arrogant elitists" Sometimes the arguing over your
difficulties with one or more packages or Lisp in general brings out
the worst in seasoned experts: In a desperate attempt to get at least
some modest entertainment out of a stale thread, they might troll back
on you by posting that you are the problem, not Lisp, and that Lisp
simply is not a programming language for idiots like you. If you see
this thesis in your trolling operation you should not try to debunk it
by pointing out that that's "an elitist point of view and thus
condemnable". Appealing to the poster's egalitarian conscience in
order to explode his point is not as effective on c.l.l. as it is on
alt.politics.correct. The simple reason is that the poster might not
have an egalitarian conscience to begin with. He might feel very good
as black-belt Lisp hacker hovering above the unwashed masses of
wannabes and tell you so, making the thread even more uninteresting
and predictable in the process. Teasing black-belt Lisp hackers by
implying that their sophistication is a disadvantage for less
sophisticated users is a slam-dunk to getting everybody worked up on
the sheer idiocy of this rhetorical manoevre, thus it is considered
very amateurish trolling. DO NOT TALK ABOUT ELITISM.
.

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