Re: bindings and assignments (was: Re: continuations)

["Perry E. Metzger" <address@hidden>]

"Gregor Kiczales" <gregor@cs.ubc.ca> writes:
> I probably shouldn't get into this, but much of this conversation seems
> to be a rehash of discussions from 20 years ago about why Lisp adoption
> didn't happen, technical superiority and all that.
[...]
> My own favorite story about this dates back to a workshop that Peter Wegner
> organized at MIT a while back (6 years ago maybe?).  In one of the sessions,
> someone stood up and said something like "I don't understand how anyone can
> think that Java is going to succeed with that type system it has".  He was
> right, he didn't understand. 

Yup, he didn't.

As long as people are rehashing ancient discussions...

I learned lisp in my first semester freshman year in college. People
who do not learn lisp then, even very good programmers, often have a
visceral anti-lisp reaction when they are first faced with lisp.

I think part of that is that lisp is simply very alien to many people
until they get used to it, and if you're productive writing in some
other language, it is not obvious that you should spend a lot of time
and effort getting used to this totally different looking language.

PR is far more important than pure geek issues like type systems in
this regard. One good essay on how Lisp saved your bacon beats 500
"but that other language sucks!" emails....

-- 
Perry E. Metzger		perry@piermont.com