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From: George Neuner on 21 Oct 2009 11:50
On Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:26:33 +0200, Adam Michalik <dodecki(a)gmail.com>
wrote:

>Kaz Kylheku <kkylheku(a)gmail.com> writes:
>
>> (whole post)
>I know that Java was not the first language to introduce method calls
>with dot. I think, however, that if someone is old enough to know
>Simula, he should also know, what OOP is really about.
>
>> Now Java was introduced as a dumbed down C++ for those who can't handle the
>> read thing.
>
>Dumbed down? I'd rather say that Java saved the world from C++ - many things
>are be better than Java, but even more things are better than C++, and
>one of them is Java.

Yup! Java saved the world all right ... saved it from all the
programs that might have been written if Java wasn't there to protect
developers from themselves.

From: Petter Gustad on 21 Oct 2009 15:58
Barry Margolin <barmar(a)alum.mit.edu> writes:

> I remember the first time I saw a Lisp program. It was about 1988, when
> I'd only been programming for about a year, mostly in BASIC. It wasn't
> the parentheses that I noticed so much, but it seemed to just keep
> saying "LAMBDA NIL" over and over. I think it was an implementation of
> Eliza running on DTSS.

I was exposed to Lisp in 1981. I was shown a Lisp interpreter written
in Lisp. I was quite impressed, but I was not at all annoyed about the
parenthesis. I had done some FORTRAN/BASIC programming prior to that,
but I did quite a bit of programming using HP calculators when I was a
kid. I guess the transition from RPN to prefix notation was natural.

Petter
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?
From: Barry Margolin on 21 Oct 2009 17:17
In article <87zl7k4izz.fsf(a)pangea.home.gustad.com>,
Petter Gustad <newsmailcomp6(a)gustad.com> wrote:

> Barry Margolin <barmar(a)alum.mit.edu> writes:
>
> > I remember the first time I saw a Lisp program. It was about 1988, when
> > I'd only been programming for about a year, mostly in BASIC. It wasn't
> > the parentheses that I noticed so much, but it seemed to just keep
> > saying "LAMBDA NIL" over and over. I think it was an implementation of
> > Eliza running on DTSS.
>
> I was exposed to Lisp in 1981. I was shown a Lisp interpreter written
> in Lisp. I was quite impressed, but I was not at all annoyed about the
> parenthesis. I had done some FORTRAN/BASIC programming prior to that,
> but I did quite a bit of programming using HP calculators when I was a
> kid. I guess the transition from RPN to prefix notation was natural.
>
> Petter

My problem was that I didn't actually have any information about how to
read Lisp at the time. I was just looking at a listing of the program,
with all my programming experience being in BASIC, and perhaps a little
COBOL and assembler as well by then.

I suspect it was Lisp 1.5 that I was reading, and it may not even have
been formatted neatly. All those "LAMBDA NIL"s I remember were probably
function definitions. I never saw past that cryptic language, since I
had no context.

It's kind of like this. If you know SOME Hebrew, but you're not fluent
in it, you might have a problem reading it without the vowels, but could
muddle through it. But if you don't know Hebrew at all, just European
languages, the ideosyncratic alphabet makes it just look like
meaningless scribbles.

--
Barry Margolin, barmar(a)alum.mit.edu
Arlington, MA
*** PLEASE post questions in newsgroups, not directly to me ***
*** PLEASE don't copy me on replies, I'll read them in the group ***
From: Dave Searles on 22 Oct 2009 00:29
Anti Vigilante wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-10-21 at 01:40 -0400, Dave Searles wrote:
>> vippstar wrote:
>>> On Oct 20, 10:47 am, Petter Gustad <newsmailco...(a)gustad.com> wrote:
>>>> Quite some time ago somebody posted an URL to an image showing some
>>>> Lisp code which were annotated "What you see", with blurred code and
>>>> highlighted parenthesis. And then "What I see" (or something like
>>>> that) with blurred parenthesis and highlighted code.
>>>>
>>>> Anybody have this URL?
>>> Searching the web is too hard in 2009.
>>> http://www.google.com/search?q=%22what+the+non-lisper+sees%22
>> This is the only link posted in this thread and it does not lead to the
>> image in question. It leads to a lot of text discussing the image, at
>> reddit and a couple of other sites, but not, strangely, to the image.
>> Using the same query in Google Image Search also is useless.
>>
>> Direct link, please.
>
> The link takes no more than two or three clicks to find.

It does not. I said again, clicking through from the SERP to most of the
results and poking around does not turn up THE ACTUAL IMAGE. It turns up
some long comment threads on reddit, and some other images (as
thumbnails), but nothing matching the description in this thread.

Direct link, please.
From: Nick Keighley on 22 Oct 2009 05:24
On 21 Oct, 22:17, Barry Margolin <bar...(a)alum.mit.edu> wrote:
> In article <87zl7k4izz....(a)pangea.home.gustad.com>,
>  Petter Gustad <newsmailco...(a)gustad.com> wrote:
> > Barry Margolin <bar...(a)alum.mit.edu> writes:
>
> > > I remember the first time I saw a Lisp program.  It was about 1988, when
> > > I'd only been programming for about a year, mostly in BASIC.  It wasn't
> > > the parentheses that I noticed so much, but it seemed to just keep
> > > saying "LAMBDA NIL" over and over.  I think it was an implementation of
> > > Eliza running on DTSS.
>
> > I was exposed to Lisp in 1981. I was shown a Lisp interpreter written
> > in Lisp. I was quite impressed, but I was not at all annoyed about the
> > parenthesis. I had done some FORTRAN/BASIC programming prior to that,
> > but I did quite a bit of programming using HP calculators when I was a
> > kid. I guess the transition from RPN to prefix notation was natural.
>
> My problem was that I didn't actually have any information about how to
> read Lisp at the time.  I was just looking at a listing of the program,
> with all my programming experience being in BASIC, and perhaps a little
> COBOL and assembler as well by then.
>
> I suspect it was Lisp 1.5 that I was reading, and it may not even have
> been formatted neatly.  All those "LAMBDA NIL"s I remember were probably
> function definitions.  I never saw past that cryptic language, since I
> had no context.
>
> It's kind of like this.  If you know SOME Hebrew, but you're not fluent
> in it, you might have a problem reading it without the vowels, but could
> muddle through it.  But if you don't know Hebrew at all, just European
> languages, the ideosyncratic alphabet makes it just look like
> meaningless scribbles.

Yes I'm like that with unfamiliar scripts. Any European language I'll
at least try guessing on the sound-it-like-english-and-try-and-find-a-
match. This even works with Greek and Cyryllic where I can (slowly!)
transliterate (the greek for beach is parallia!). But, I was convined
that Arab towns didn't have street signs until it dawned on me that my
brain's find-text-in-environment function was discarding arabic
script. The signs were invisible because they weren't being recognised
as text!


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