From: William James <w_a_x_man@...>
Date: 2009-02-25T09:24:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Nexus Programming Language

Pascal J. Bourguignon wrote:

> 
> If you were using CL

CL = COBOL Lisp

>            (if more people were using CL), and Ruby were not
> invented, more bosses would let us use CL as a dynamic language, and
> indeed we wouldn't be forced to use Ruby (or worse, perl or python).
> 
> Of course, you share the culpability with perl, PHP, Python, Java and
> so on.
> 
> But I'm mostly justified in thinking this, by the authors of most of
> these languages themselves.  Some of these authors are just poor chaps
> not knowing better, but some other including Java and Ruby knew very
> well Lisp, and instead of choosing to help develop and spread lisp,
> they voluntarily chosed to create different and inferior languages,
> picking only parts of lisp, and grafting over their abortive creation
> some monstruous syntax.

In his city R'lyeh, dead Cthulhu lies dreaming.
"Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!"

> 
> The fact that these monstruous syntaxes view good in the eyes of the
> unwashed masses, and that the lack of features (when it's not just the
> inclusion of misfeatures) is oblivious to the same masses IS NOT an
> excuse.
> 
> The only result is that Lisp is relegated as just an elegant weapon
> from a more civilized time, still mastered only by a few remaining
> Jedi.

The poor frightened wretch won't admit that CL (COBOL Lisp) is
a flint knife and that Ruby is a samurai sword.

He fears and trembles at Ruby's overtowering superiority.

I've asked him to disgorge some feculent COBOL Lisp code here
so that we, while holding our noses, can demonstrate how Ruby
can perform the same task more elegantly and concisely,
and less malodorously.

He hasn't done so.  He will never do so.

And he is so idiotic that he can't comprehend that COBOL Lisp
isn't the only Lisp---is, in fact, the worst of the lot.
He can't learn Clojure because to his fossilized brain
COBOL, COBOL-LISP, APL, and FORTRAN are new and radical languages.


> 
> But there is still hope!
> 
> This is perhaps the good that will come from these evils.  A lot of
> programmers are now exposed on the goodness of dynamic languages, and
> they may notice (or if not by themselves, *I* will try to make them
> notice in threads like this), that their fad language of the day, is
> actually some incomplete subset of Lisp, and then why not use the full
> and authentic thing?  Common Lisp is this way!

The Way, The Truth, and The Light.  He's a faithful disciple.

"Common Lisp" is cult jargon to conceal the True Name of their god:
Commode Lord.

-- 
Common Lisp is a significantly ugly language.  If Guy and I had been
locked in a room, you can bet it wouldn't have turned out like that.
  --- Dick Gabriel