Cross-posting is good

[Alex Martelli]

mike420 at ziplip.com wrote:
   ...
> When cross-posting, people try to be more responsible, avoiding

My general Usenet experience says otherwise, actually.

> while many Lispers learned about "yield" and that the
> usual examples of macros like UNWIND-PROTECT and its
> friend WITH-OPEN-FILE do not have to be macros at all,
> if your fingers can manage to type the magic 6 letters.

Hmmm, which ones?  Not 'yield' -- those are just FIVE...

> OTOH, such idea exposure could have prevented such big
> mistakes like C#, Mozart/Oz, XML++, ARC and others.

You think Paul Graham's ARC is "a big mistake"?  Why,
specifically?  What specific criticisms are you leveling 
at it? And why do you think Graham was lacking in "idea
exposure"?  I'm not saying I agree with the underlying
design decisions &c, but I don't understand your point.

I would be curious about just the same questions on
Mozart/Oz, too (which also has the advantage that you
can dowload it and play with it).  What's so "bigly
mistaken" about it?  Why do you think the researchers
from all over Europe who built it were suffering from
lack of "idea exposure"?

(( C# is basically just a competitive commercial move
against Java and shares most of the latter's defects --
but, again, "lack of idea exposure" doesn't seem to
apply; as for XML++, wasn't it just a research project
to enrich XML with "semantical descriptions"...? ))


Alex