Re: Flamebait if I ever saw it
- From: Kent M Pitman <pitman@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 20 Sep 2007 15:19:14 -0400
[ comp.lang.lisp only; http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PFAQ/cross-posting.html ]
are <Proponent@xxxxxxx> writes:
On Sep 19, 6:52 pm, Raffael Cavallaro <raffaelcavallaro@pas-d'espam-
s'il-vous-plait-mac.com> wrote:
On 2007-09-19 19:18:24 -0400, are <Propon...@xxxxxxx> said:
Wanting something
that's fast and high-level, I've zeroed in on Lisp and OCaml.
Superficially, these two seem very different from one another, yet
I've noticed that there a some who post to both of these groups.
Would anyone who knows both languages well (let's not start a flame
war, please!) care to comment on the similarities and differences
between them?
Wanting something that's fast and high-level,
I've zeroed in on Lisp and Scheme.
Superficially, these two seem very different
from one another, yet I've noticed
that there are some who post to both of these groups.
Would anyone who knows both languages well (let's not start a
flame war, please!) care to comment on the similarities
and differences between them? ;^)
------------------------------------------
Anyone else here on c.l.l think that 'are' should choose
OCaml, decamp to c.l.functional, and take frog-boy with him?
Yeah, well, I admit it was optimistic of me to hope that a flame war
might be avoided regardless of how genuine my interest in the question
posed was.
Although Raffael's tone may have been a bit flippant, I do think that
if you peel past the personal-sounding bits, there's a serious
suggestion hiding in there that's worth looking at.
Sometimes when faced with a decision like this, the flamewar you
anticipate is caused not by someone failing to taking someone
seriously, but by taking them seriously.
The problem is that we are still recovering in this group from an
extensive discussion of this very issue, and all you have to do is
peel back a couple of months to see it. It was long and painful,
and the ratio of signal to noise was not nearly as high as many would
like, but it's all archived for your convenience.
We don't necessarily have to relive it. It wasn't pleasant and it
sapped energy from more pleasant discussions we'd like to be having.
Moreover, people often think it's a diss to say "go elsewhere" but not
every language is for every person, and it's quite common for people
to be properly placed in a language other than Lisp. We are not
threatened by people going elsewhere, and you ought not take that as a
negative. Languages serve user communities and those user communities
each have biases. (See my http://www.nhplace.com/kent/PS/Lambda.html
for an elaboration of this theme.) There are two reasons to shop for
a language: (a) because you need a specific feature [in which case you
know what that feature is in advance and should just ask] or (b)
because you want something that just lets you write stuff the way you
want to say it. In the latter case, I think you want to look at some
programs and decide what feels good.
Feature set comparisons are easily divisive, depending on how they are
worded, and it's easy to see how you might think someone trying to keep
you from having an open discussion about comparative feature sets might
be trying to do you an injustice, but it can be just the opposite.
Pick one or both languages and just write some code. It's good to
know a lot of languages anyway. So don't make people choose for
you--if you have it narrowed to two, just learn both. Then see where
you get.
And preferrably, don't assume the programs will have the same
shape. Try to avoid questions that ask about what the "word for x" is
in the other language, as if the only difference between languages was
what word you use to say the exact identical thing. Languages vary in
subtle and important ways that change the way you write programs in
them even to accomplish a task. Focus on accomplishing a goal, not on
syntax. If you're at the point of wanting pedantically a particular
syntax, you should just ask which language has it and when they raise
their hand, you should dive for it because now you're back in category
(a) of my choices above.
Questions on this forum (and probably on any other, too) are better
treated when they're asked by someone who genuinely seems to want to
worry about just getting something done in the language, rather than
just having us justify the fact that we happen to prefer this language
to others. (Adding cross-posting is a devastatingly bad thing to do
in this regard. See the URL at top of this post for a detailed
explanation, and why the fact that "union" does not equal
"intersection" matters.) Forums have titles in order to attract
people who like to talk about those things. The preference for Lisp
by people who post here is not, a priori, a rejection of other
options. But when we want to talk about those languages, we go to
their forums mostly. It's just been a sore spot that for the
particular language you mention, a major proponent of that language
has overrun us with comparisons whether we wanted it or not. So that
brings me back to my original point, and I'll stop there.
.
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