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

["Joe Marshall" <address@hidden>]

>
> 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.

Such is a frequent topic amongst Lisp hackers.

> One thing I've learned from all that is that if you want to change what
> tools people use, you have to truly understand and accept why one set of
> users has a different preference than seems right to you. Cynical stories
> about people who don't use Lisp being stupid, or naïve don't cut it. They
> don't give you the ability to really stand in the other person's shoes and
> see it their way. And without that ability, you aren't going to be able to
> speak to them in a way that makes them see why the points you see as
important
> might also matter to them.

I agree.  I hope you don't think that I'm hoping to effect change
by denigrating people who don't accept my viewpoint.  (I'm responding
because I identify myself as someone who is cynical and opinionated.)

In this forum, I don't want to change the tools that people use.  I'm sure
that my opinion has no effect whatsoever on anyone's decision to type
their next line of code in whatever language they are most comfortable with.

> That's not to say that these so-called technical issues have no
validity --
> they do. It is just to say that their validity is socially constructed,
and is
> therefore on par with the kinds of issues other stakeholders find
important.

It may be for many people, but I cannot live in a world without objective
truth and ideals.  Social constructs are not ipso facto important, nor do
they trump external reality.  If we disagree on an objective fact, then one
of us is wrong.  (Probably me, but so I learn.)

> 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.

I'm sure that his opinion was based on the observation that the Java type
system
makes some very useful things extremely difficult to do.  Certainly I don't
understand why people time and time again choose not to make their lives
less complicated.  I've come to the conclusion that most people are
irrational.

--------------

Ob Language issue:

According to a C# implementor, C# will have anonymous inner classes
in the near future, and the lexically scoped variables will *not* be
restricted
to be final.