carpe linguam

[Robin Becker]

In article <37BEC755.645A350D at fnmail.com>, Per Kistler
<kistler at fnmail.com> writes
>Hi
>
>...but Tom has been attacked over and over again. I can really
>understand that he may loose temper after beeing treeted like
>a idiot again and again. And Tom is really not any dummy. 
>I suggest to treat the "bigger" guys in the computer community
>with more respect, which would automatically prevent any "discurse"
>like the preceeding one. If that's not possible, I suggest another
>way: Zen-meditation. This adds a exception handling wrapper
>around the language-syntax-torn mind:-)
>
>Cheers, Per.
>
>srenner at lycosmail.com wrote:
>
>> The reactions Mr. Christiansen evokes may have more to do with his style
>> than his content. It strikes me as pompous, pretentious, hostile,
>> autodidactic, preening, vain and unpleasant. Perhaps this is not the
>> right newsgroup for him.
>
>
A genius gets some allowances of course, but we've seen TC in other
contexts usually being (or seeming to be) arrogant, bigoted and plain
nasty. The Tcl and Python communities certainly know him well. As an
amateur of computer 'science' I have always been interested in computer
languages as well, but I don't think there's much I can tell the python
community about linguistics (computer or human). I was originally
appalled by the whole concept of whitespace meaning something (I hated
occam the crappy transputer language). Oh dear are there any transputer
fans left out there?

The L Walls & T Christiansens may operate in mysterious ways beyond our
ken, but genius doesn't need to bang drums.
-If dinosaurs had learnt perl they'd probably still be here-ly yrs- 
Robin Becker