kennethtilton

<g> Your exercise may be the take-off point.

You sound like you know how to code. Can you talk a little more about how the algorithm you were confronting made the effort of getting a Scheme platform working worthwhile? Understood if the answer is "not that big an effort". :)

Part of my question is that a solid lisp (of any ilk) programmer can program non-lispy languages in a lispy way.

Maybe somewhere in between. The imperfections are so small that even a modest effort would never get undertaken. Something folks need to realize is that Lisp truly is a metalanguage: I think both Graham and Norvig knocked off quick and dirty OOP hacks when that (decent) fad came along. So it is hard to imagine what innovation might come along that would force us to get the Lisp hood up.

Good gosh, no. For example, I am with Einstein: make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler. ie, There is a right amount of everything. I guess I am also with Goldilocks, then. I said, "More comfortable", but Americans have nicely demonstrated how in excess that leads to obesity and diabetes. So now we have learned that true comfort comes from a bit more exercise and a lot less garbage food, and now we have come full circle: life is not futile. People ridiculed in the 60s for espousing healthier diet finally got heard and made the world a better place. Did you see the recent news about Coke/Pepsi in decline? Kaching.

My first thought was that the question cannot be answered without knowing what we must fail at inevitably for life to be futile. I looked up futile to be sure:

"incapable of producing any useful result; pointless."

As I feared, it begs the question: what is considered useful?

If it is leaving the world a better (healthier, more peaceful, more ccmfrtable) place than when you found it, no, life is not futile.

If the goal is personal happiness or at least contentment, no, life is not futile, though it certainly feels that way during clinical depression. (Long, dark winters can do that -- look up S.A.D.)

Exactly. We Common Lispers created Clojure as a firewall when we realized The Great Unwashed were headed our way. Seems to be working.

"CL is an abject disaster"? I need a red card over here.

Nonsense. The standards process is a beast, so no one is going to kick it off for anything other than a good solid rethink. As others have noted, the language and spec are done, aka pretty much ideal. Go write some code, people.

ps. Love elsewhere a mention of "modern-style" language development. Sounds like "make it up as we go", what Lisp was doing in the sixties.

...because it was a bad idea. I did some serious work with a Lisp-1 (Arc) and it was a PITA with no discernible win to it.

ps. Have him take a crack at protein-folding so he does not get bored.

The interesting thing to this old fart as a newcomer to HN is that it really does not make much difference whether or not he is a troll. Unless of course he opens that PayPal account.

What I am fascinated by is the unquestioning support from so many. It speaks to a community with a strong "we're all in this together vibe".

Whether or not the OP is a troll or a psych grad doing research does not change what came after, and what came after to me is the big story here. my2.