Bill, To quote the article:
"For many months the Lisp advocates pressed on. I was baffled. Many extremely intelligent people I know and had much respect for were praising Lisp with almost religious dedication. There had to be something there, something I couldn't afford not to get my hands on! Eventually my thirst for knowledge won me over. ...[snip].... And then I got it. The enlightenment came instantaneously. One moment I understood nothing, and the next moment everything clicked into place. I've achieved nirvana. Dozens of times I heard Eric Raymond's statement quoted by different people: "Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot." I never understood this statement. I never believed it could be true. And finally, after all the pain, it made sense!. There was more truth to it than I ever could have imagined. I've achieved an almost divine state of mind, an instantaneous enlightenment experience that turned my view of computer science on its head in less than a single second" I wrote: > I COULD have written it as "strings" that read exactly like > the original syntax but I gained several advantages by using > lisp-like syntax. You wrote: > What you wrote is not just lisp-like, it *is* lisp which, if you deeply understood what you said, would be a profound statement. Either you "get it" or you don't. There is no half-way with Lisp. There are no words to explain what it means to "get it" until you do ... and then there is no reason to explain it; you get it. I wasn't trying to start a language debate. I was only trying to point people at a very gentle introduction by someone who suddenly "got it" and was trying to help others "see the whole elephant". Why don't we just let this rest and not turn it into a debate. Tim _______________________________________________ Axiom-developer mailing list Axiom-developer@nongnu.org http://lists.nongnu.org/mailman/listinfo/axiom-developer
