On Dec 5, 9:23 pm, Rick Moynihan <[email protected]> wrote: > On Dec 3, 9:11 pm, Michael Sparks <[email protected]> wrote: > > > On Friday 03 December 2010 10:30:27 Robert Berry wrote: > > > > Macros. MACROS! > > > Yes, go off and use Excel why don't you. (Yes, I do know what Lisp Macros > > are) > > > Actually that's an interesting thought - there are many more hundreds if not > > thousands or hundreds of thousands of Excel macros written in the world, > > used > > by people and in use by people, solving real problems than there are lisp > > macros making people's lives easier. (Much as I hate excel, that's one hell > > of > > a fly in the ointment in the "macros" argument) > > Seriously, if you know what Lisp macros are then you'll know that this > is a strawman argument. The only thing Lisp Macro's have in common > with Excel Macros is the name!
Yes, it's a strawman. Very deliberately so. It does not change the point that as much as the lisp world likes to think it's god's gift to the universe, to the vast majority of humanity it will never be any use to the vast majority of humanity because they will look at it and walk off in disgust. For all the supposed utility of lisp macros - which aren't actually much more useful really than import hooks, and about as sensible to use - they're hardly worth writing code in parse trees. Also, please don't consider this "constructive discussion of s- expressions". Consider it outright hostility. They're a ludicrious as the notion of writing config files in XML or even writing code in XML. (The former happens far too often) > Excel is also more popular than Python, does that make Python any less > useful? Yes. Python is less useful to the average person than Excel. I might like python and find it useful, but that does not mean it is more useful. Excel is a more useful tool to the bulk of humanity over python. I don't let my personal thoughts on a particular piece of technology outweigh my common sense. If you can't understand that the key point of python is readability, then I feel sorry for you - please read Steven Pembertons talk "Perhaps programmers are humans too", which does have *a lot* to do with where python's coming from. And yes, python does get schtick for using whitespace - it forces code to be readable. That's considered a core feature by python users. Lisp gets schtick for using parentheses - it forces code to be UN- readable. That's considered irrelevant by lisp advocates. On that note, I'll bow out this. LISP advocates annoy because they never seem to understand that singular, vital point. Michael. (and yes, I have coded a variety of languages and paradigms, including non-trivial programs in SML, prolog, Lisp, and a host of others through the years including random things like COBOL, 6502, Occam, pascal, aside from the usual group of C, C++, perl and python. I stick with python because when I look at someone else's code, it is clear, readable and usable. Code is for people to communicate to other people with and the machine is there for the benefit of the people using it to solve the problem.) -- To post: [email protected] To unsubscribe: [email protected] Feeds: http://groups.google.com/group/python-north-west/feeds More options: http://groups.google.com/group/python-north-west
