Is there anything *enjoyable* about our development process?

[Stuart D. Gathman]

On Sun, 16 Oct 2005, Josh Sled wrote:

> Lisp is universal in a way that none of those other languages are.  My
> argument is only that if one has any interest in programming, then the
> unique simplicity and perspective of lisp is something one should know.

Agreed.  And I have done quite a bit of academic type problems in LISP.
But working on a real project like GnuCash means learning the 
libraries, not the language.

> I suppose it is esoteric relative to how all other mainstream languages
> have developed.  That doesn't make it not worth knowing about.  It's an
> important enough contribution to the field to make it worth the time to
> go out of one's way to understand.  It's eye-opening.  It will influence
> how you write code in those other languages, which is not something that
> goes the other way; no one looks at the simplicity of expression in a
> Java source file and feels the need to re-write their lisp code.

Agreed for Java.  However, looking at the simplicity of Smalltalk
(and to lesser extent Forth) made me want to re-write lisp code.  And Prolog 
is *very* thought provoking.

-- 
	      Stuart D. Gathman <stuart at bmsi.com>
    Business Management Systems Inc.  Phone: 703 591-0911 Fax: 703 591-6154
"Confutatis maledictis, flamis acribus addictis" - background song for
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