Choosing a programming language as a competitive tool

[Steven D. Majewski]

On Fri, 4 May 2001, Andrew Dalke wrote:

> As a data point for comparison, I started learning Perl to do
> CGI scripts.  I kinda figured out cgi-lib.pl and made it do the
> basics of what I wanted it to do.  I then bought the Perl book
> and after reading a few chapters understood it well enough to
> finish what I needed to do.
> 
> I tried learning Lisp from an essay in Douglas Hofstadter's
> "Metamagical Themas."  I learned to car, cdr and setq, and
> that was about it.  I couldn't see how to apply that to problems
> I wanted to solve (probably because the essays didn't talk
> about I/O) so I put it aside for a while.

Well there's the problem Andrew! 

You tried to learn Lisp from a metaphysical book on Philosophy and
Mathematics? It would have been a more fair matchup if you had also
tried to learn Perl from a Comparative Linguistics paper by Larry Wall. 


When I said the problem was more the abstract academic tone of some
of the Lisp texts and not the language, I wasn't even *thinking* of
anything that far out of left field!    

;-)

-- Steve Majewski