I want to live in a world of competent, intelligent, caring people.  This
  is a large part of the reason I was attracted to computers in the 1970's.
  Computer people showed passion for their work, dedication to quality, and
  above all, both a strong sense of joy in their skills and their work and
  an equally strong sense of pride in the results of their work.  It was a
  lot of _fun_ to hang around older computer people when I was a kid, it
  was utterly wonderful to be able to use large computers at the University
  of Oslo and learn to use and program under TOPS-10 and TOPS-20 on _real_
  computers, massive DECsystem-10s and -20s.  People in the business gave
  me computers to play with, I was invited to test new stuff that would not
  hit the market for months, both DEC and IBM sent me half a ton of system
  documentation for free.  All of the people I came into contact with were
  happy they could work with computers and they spread that happiness to
  anyone who looked as if they had the capacity to care about computers.
  Then I was shown a Lisp on a VAX running BSD Unix (probably Franz Lisp),
  and more competent, intelligent, caring people virtually sprung up around
  me, eager to show me cool stuff and waiting for me to grasp the elegance.
  I felt like I was born a Lisper, that this was the language that matched
  how I thought, as opposed to fortran, Cobol, Pascal or any of the other
  Algol derivatives, which I had of course learned and played with.  (The
  only other language that had said "me" was the assembly language of the
  PDP-10, MACRO-10.)  But it was hard to use Lisp for real stuff, so I had
  little opportunity to use it for real.  Unix arrived on the scene in 1980
  and I learned C, because it was the language of joy in the Unix world,
  and everybody were e{*filter*}d and happy about it.  Mastering it was a huge
  challenge, but I did, and that was very satisfying and people came to me
  and offered lots of money to help them create bug-free applications or
  debug their applications.  Ten years after I had discovered computers,
  and still a kid, I started to make a living programming them and helping
  people realize their desires on computers.  I found that I could make
  people happy and that my love of my work was contagious: it was just so
  great to watch people share my satisfaction that something _worked_ that
  they had not even dared to hope would.  Over and over again, I felt
  "Yeah!  I am _good_ at this!" and both the computers and the people I
  talked to concurred.  I was far from alone in feeling like this.  All
  around me were people who felt the same way, who were competent and
  intelligent and caring about each their own fields, and we could talk
  about and study each other's work and share information and sit down
  together and solve problems bigger than each of us could deal with alone
  and all around us was the common understanding that computers were great,
  that our languages were great, that we were great because we knew how to
  use them to great benefit, that everything was just plain _great_.

  I believe every computer enthusiast recognizes himself in these words.  I
  have certainly met so many real enthusiasts all over the world that I do
  not think those who did not share these feelings worked with computers in
  the 1970's, 1980's or even early 1990's.  Today, we have a lot of people
  who only work with computers because it pays for their expensive homes,
  cars, spouses, and kids, but I do not care much about those people, and
  they have no impact on the industry, either, as they are the people who
  get laid off and simply go into another business they do not care much
  about either if they cannot continue to work with computers.  The rest of
  the computer people are just as competent, intelligent, and caring as
  they used to be, and they drive innovation, development, e{*filter*}ment in
  new stuff of all kinds.  They also keep the little fire within burning
  with a passion for the older things they have loved all their lives.

  For every hardware or software product, there are enthusiasts: wild,
  untamed, uncontrollable people who overflow with e{*filter*}ment that "normal"
  people have no way to understand.  It is that _e{*filter*}ment_ that sets us
  apart from the crowd.  It is that _e{*filter*}ment_ that causes people to join
  free software and open source projects to give away their work to others
  of the same kind.  This is why free software and open source are mostly
  developer-to-developer, because only developers share their joy.  Users
  do not understand, they do not care, and they do not understand why we
  care.  The currency in the developer community is _enthusiasm_.  Not just
  your own for your own work, but for the competence, intelligence, and
  caring that just about anybody else excudes, too.  As a developer, you
  are not judged solely by your work, but by how great you think it is,
  what went into making it great, and for your capacity to understand how
  great somebody else's work is.

  All of the software tools on the Internet have a following behind them:
  People who _care_ and who are willing to help others who care.  All
  languages have groups of dedicated people behind them that profess their
  love for their language, in direct words, in direct action, in every way
  they can.  All languages with vendors behind them have developer forums
  where people come with a general attitude that the tools are great and
  that the vendor does a great job providing for them, unless, of course,
  there are bugs, in which case the "angry side" of developers show up and
  they feel personally betrayed by incompetent, unintelligent, or careless
  people.  But give them half a chance to prove otherwise, and developers
  will love them again, forgiving and forgetting, because they share the
  overall enthusiasm that drives us all.  In fact, developer to developer,
  we do not only expect enthusiasm, we demand it.  There is something very
  _wrong_ with a developer who just slops something together and leaves a
  stinking heap of dysfunctional crap, and such people _anger_ developers.

  The demand for enthusiasm is a profound recognition of the competence,
  intelligence and caring that _must_ go into computer software.  It is
  among the hardest mental tasks known to man to create bug-free software.
  We manage to do it because we demand competence, intelligence and caring
  from _all_ the people who take part in its creation.  If there are
  somebody among us who fail to deliver on these counts, the are not only
  doing a bad job, they are destroying part of the very fragile fabric that
  know keeps everything together.  Because, let us just face it right away:
  Creating software is so immensely hard that we cannot afford to create it
  in a world where incompetent, unintelligent, careless people must be safe
  from harm.  This is different from every other engineering discipline --
  all of them are about ensuring that the blundering moron does not get
  himself killed.  Software can crash on the incompetent, bridges cannot.
  We "solve" this problem by requiring of the people that set the standards
  for our industry that they be enthusiasts, highly competent, highly
  intelligent, very caring enhtusiasts who are devoted and dedicated to a
  level of quality that would be unimaginable in any other discipline.  We
  do not always get what we want, but that is the requirement we have.

  The optimism that the information technology industry managed to excude
  to the general public a few years ago led to the hyperinflation in IT
  stocks.  The wild, untamed, uncontrollable e{*filter*}ment that computer
  people feel towards their own work spilled over into the general public
  for the first time, and the public was completely unprepared for it, so
  they thought it was more than the _feeling_ shared among developers.  It
  went really bad.  Billions of dollars have moved from the hands of those
  who believed to unscrupulous, big spenders who were not developers, but
  managers and other suits who got a whiff of our enthusiasm and could not
  handle it.  Such is the immense power of the enthusiasm that developers
  and computer people feel that it has probably produced a global recession
  when it affected people who did not know that it was a feeling _reserved_
  for competent, intelligent, caring people who knew where it came from and
  when it should be used.  However sad the losses and difficult our times
  because of it, the enthusiasm remains untamed among developers.  They may
  be more cautious in their spending and they may regret that they spent
  all that free money too soon, but their core belief in competence,
  intelligence, and caring has not changed.  Developers everywhere are
  still devoting their time and their lives to the extremely high quality
  of their work.  The enthusiasm that defines computer people has not been
  killed by being laid off, by losing money, by failing products, even by
  betrayal from managers, investors, what have you.  Computers are great,
  our languages are great, we are great, we just had a bit of bad luck.  I
  include this part of negativism because I want to show that the greatness
  that keeps us together and in the business survived such a huge blow.

  I think Common Lisp is a really _great_ language.  I absolutely loved Guy
  Steele's "Common Lisp the Language" in both editions -- he excudes more
  competence, intelligence, and caring than any other programming language
  book author I have read.  His profound and rich sense of humor is no
  accident.   I think ANSI Common Lisp is the best standard there is, and
  the language it defines is most certainly the top of the crop.  I feel a
  deep personal satisfaction in being able to program in this greatest of
  languages.

  Now, when I approach a Common Lisp vendor, I fully _expect_ him to share
  my enthusiasm for the technology
...

read more »

Perhaps you will call me "rabid nutcase" or maybe just and "outsider" to the
world of LISP or even computers and programming, but I still would like to
write several sentences of my comments.

First of all I must say that while still being a very new follower of LISP,
I do love and respect the language. I am also quite enthusiastic about telling
other people about LISP and how great a language it is. The key word to all
that, however, is "language". In your article you made an impression that
LISP is a religion or at least a philosophy and that unbelievers (so-called
"destructive/rabid nutcases" or "negative morons") are sent by the satan.
The problem here (IMHO, of course) is that LISP is _not_ a religion and it
_not_ even a philosophy, instead it _is_ a tool and it _has_ good and bad
sides. Moreover, people who choose to be blind when it comes to the bad sides
and to the fact that standards change and new needs arrive, _can_ be called
"religious zealots".

Here's a simple parallel: suppose you have a hammer with standard {*filter*}
handle which has little bumps all over it for better grip, yet they irritate
your hand. Will you go to the store and buy a new hammer or a new handle or
will you take a knife and illiminate the bumps and use your existing hammer?
Of course there's a possibility that you have many hammers in your toolshed,
in which case you will just go and take a different one without such bumps
(or with fewer bumps), but let's forget about that this time.

So, unless you really hate knives or you really like to drive to the store
and spend money on new stuff, you will probably choose to eliminate the small
inconviniece yourslef. Now when the inconvenience grows bigger and many people
choose to eliminate them themselves, the store that sells our hammers will
probably want to change the design of their hammer so customers will be happy.
This does not mean that every store everywhere will do the same, perhaps
because they think it's too small to change their standard or just because
they choose not to. So now we have stores that have eliminated the inconvenience
and stores that did not, so which will succeed more? I cannot say that the
stores that did not eliminate the bumps will go out of bussiness completely
or loose all their customers, there might be people who work in gloves and
the bumps really do help them have a better grip, so they stay with the
standard.

Unless the standard hammers have other inconveniences and a whole lot of
influencial people decide to change the standard, the standard stays the same
and we have standard hammers that many people find obsolete and we have new
non-standard hammers that many people find better and new. So should the
non-standard hammers now be renamed so the standard hammers can be standard
or do they stay with the name "hammer"?

Ok, looks like my "sever sentences" have grown to a page, but I hope I did
make my point clear. I will not comment on any of the specific cases of
implementations being non-ANSI compliant, I'm just stating my general opinion
about standards and changes in standards.

Regards,
 rk

Perhaps you will call me "rabid nut-case" or maybe just and "outsider" to the
world of LISP or even computers and programming, but I still would like to
write several sentences of my comments.

First of all I must say that while still being a very new follower of LISP,
I do love and respect the language. I am also quite enthusiastic about telling
other people about LISP and how great a language it is. The key word to all
that, however, is "language". In your article you made an impression that
LISP is a religion or at least a philosophy and that un-believers (so-called
"destructive/rabid nut-cases" or "negative morons") are sent by the satan.
The problem here (IMHO, of course) is that LISP is _not_ a religion and it
_not_ even a philosophy, instead it _is_ a tool and it _has_ good and bad
sides. Moreover, people who choose to be blind when it comes to the bad sides
and to the fact that standards change and new needs arrive, _can_ be called
"religious zealots".

Here's a simple parallel: suppose you have a hammer with standard {*filter*}
handle which has little bumps all over it for better grip, yet they irritate
your hand. Will you go to the store and buy a new hammer or a new handle or
will you take a knife and eliminate the bumps and use your existing hammer?
Of course there's a possibility that you have many hammers in your tool-shed,
in which case you will just go and take a different one without such bumps
(or with fewer bumps), but let's forget about that this time.

So, unless you really hate knives or you really like to drive to the store
and spend money on new stuff, you will probably choose to eliminate the small
inconvenience yourself. Now when the inconvenience grows bigger and many people
choose to eliminate them themselves, the store that sells our hammers will
probably want to change the design of their hammer so customers will be happy.
This does not mean that every store everywhere will do the same, perhaps
because they think it's too small to change their standard or just because
they choose not to. So now we have stores that have eliminated the inconvenience
and stores that did not, so which will succeed more? I cannot say that the
stores that did not eliminate the bumps will go out of bossiness completely
or loose all their customers, there might be people who work in gloves and
the bumps really do help them have a better grip, so they stay with the
standard.

Unless the standard hammers have other inconveniences and a whole lot of
influential people decide to change the standard, the standard stays the same
and we have standard hammers that many people find obsolete and we have new
non-standard hammers that many people find better and new. So should the
non-standard hammers now be renamed so the standard hammers can be standard
or do they stay with the name "hammer"?

Ok, looks like my "sever sentences" have grown to a page, but I hope I did
make my point clear. I will not comment on any of the specific cases of
implementations being non-ANSI compliant, I'm just stating my general opinion
about standards and changes in standards.

Regards,
 rk

I love Common Lisp! I quit my previous job just because the boss
didn't even try to understand me and my enthusiasm about it.

[Quitting a well-paid job without even having another place ready to
go to is quite a crazy thing to do here. I even don't know any other
Common Lisp programmer (except the one who is learning it -- the guy
from my previous working place) in my country.]

I love Common Lisp as it is and would be really happy to see it become
even better.

I'll be there when we're taking the fortress :)

--
Janis Dzerins

  If million people say a stupid thing it's still a stupid thing.

  Huh!?  If you get that impression, if it is because you think in those
  terms.  I most certainly do not.  Enthusiasm and religion do have some
  emotions in common, but I think you must be out of your mind if you see
  evidence of your impression in what I wrote.

  Nobody chooses to be blind to them (where do you get these insane ideas?),
  they simply do not denigrate the whole language because of things they do
  not use or, better, work to improve through the standardization channels
  they trust to correct mistakes because they still love the language.

  Obviously, you did not get the message at all.  Let me just hope somebody
  else does.

///

Your message has been very interesting, but Erik: You are a naive guy.
Do you really believe there is a collaboration between dealers and the
user-community?

On one side you are promoting (in other posts) that only
commercial-dealers are capable of producing a good Lisp product and  now
you are whining. Erik, there will never be the situation when dealers
will ask you what you want. This is not because you are Erik Naggum, its
because they run a business and nothing else.

I am also a naive guy and often promote a programming language in the
hope the developers want also hear my opinion; but often I get the
impression they do not listen.

I am not against commercial-products (even when they are pricy; we also
in the astophysics-community use expensive tools, e.g. IDL costs USD
2500.-), but open or free software can in some cases be more flexible.

S. Gonzi

  People who run a business generally listen to their customers if
  they want to stay in business.
--

        {*filter*}ell Oy                                     +358 41 467 2502
        Rauhankatu 8 C, FIN-00170 Helsinki, FINLAND     www.{*filter*}ell.com

Well, *I* sure hope vendors ask their customers what they want every
once in a while!

--tim

Yes, I raise my newbie hand :)

This is IMHO a bad analogy. When you end your work
you take the hammer with you. The code is a
product, not a tool.

Now lets think about something standard that stays
with the final product when you leave.
Nuts & bolts, thats it. Now you're working happily
and some-big-bolt-making-company *replaces* all
his products with non-standard enhanded nuts and
bolts. We have a problem here.

The good thing (tm) is IMHO to sell standard
products *and* special non-standard work-specific
products. Doing it otherwise you're screwing :)
your customers.

--

Eduardo Mu?oz

  Really?  Na?ve.  Nobody has ever said that before.  I think you are
  reading a _lot_ of stuff into what I said that simply is not there, and
  the rest of your message is so far out I think this conclusion is
  warranted.

  Um, actually, yes (provided that you meant "vendor", as in producer of
  products).  If you do not believe there is, you are simply ignorant and
  cynical.

  I am whining?  About what?  Are you sure you have read what I wrote?

  And this has what to do with what I said?  Do you perhaps not see the
  difference between stating what I want from a vendor and wanting them to
  ask me what I want?  Why should the vendor ask _me_ for anything but my
  money?  The real question is how smart they are in trying to pry them
  loose from my hard and fast grip when I tell them that I want a fully
  conforming implementation of Common Lisp and some enthusiasm, please.  If
  they are just a wee bit smarter than completely asinine bozos, they will
  understand that denouncing the very things I came to them to purchase is
  not the way to do it.  Unless, of course, they have been taught by their
  users that it _is_ OK to denounce the standard they try to implement.

  And this has what to do with what I said?  What do you think running a
  business entails?  If they say "we hate the standard, but buy the best
  implementation of that shit from us", do you think they run a business or
  a freak show?  If they ran a business, they would say "we love this
  stuff, and if you buy the best implementation of this wonderful stuff
  from us, we'll love you, too".  That is what marketing is all about.

  And this has what to do with what I said?

  And this has what to do with what I said?

  Is the concept of enthusiasm _really_ this foreign to people?

  Perhaps this was a na?ve thing to do.  I mean, post an optimistic,
  upbeat, enthusiastic message about how languages thrive only when people
  love them, to a crowd of {*filter*}ing retards who want their language to
  wither and die.  What was I _thinking_?  Well, I put my neck out.  If the
  Common Lisp community rejects enthusiasm and optimism and they really
  find it much more fascinating to post gloom and doom and listen to the
  death knell of their past loved ones than to get a grip on themselves and
  start thinking positively, well, then _I_ have better things to do with
  my life than to congregate with such pathetic losers.  Perhaps this will
  be a test.  Perhaps we will see a show of hands from the negative morons
  and the positive people who want Common Lisp to live are way outnumbered.
  Then I have no reason to expect anything from this community at all and
  the vendors are indeed right to denounce their own livelihood and try to
  grab as much cash from the poor sods who still use Common Lisp as they
  can, because they see that they are going downhill and do not even want
  to _try_ any way to get back on track.  Perhaps it was really stupid to
  ask publicly if people were positive or negative, to ask people to say
  they love or hate their language, because perhaps everybody just loathes
  Common Lisp and I am the only "religious zealot" left who likes it?
  Perhaps the John Foderaros among you are right.  But I still hope not.

///

There seems to be a problem with your stance:

a) Why do expect anything from the community; or better: why should the
community care on Naggum?

b) You are only a Lisp programmer, but you are not the inventor of Lisp
nor you are in any Lisp-standard-commitee (prove me wrong)

c) Do you really think that promoting a language or a product in a
newsgroup will really change the behaviour of the community?

d) Naggum! You will have to learn that you are not alone on this planet.
And when there is the situation that most part of the community is not
on your side, so you should accept it. Nobody impedes you, and you can
make your own Common-Lisp-Naggum standard.

e) Write a book about good Lisp style ( you may not have to search for a
publisher; there is a WWW, you can put it as LaTex/DVI or whatever you
prefer for downloading on your homepage)

f) Erik, you are a buck more naive as thought.

So, this was my last conversation with you, because the coming soon
situation will be: Whining Naggum will write:

{*filter*}ing:  "I think you are reading a _lot_ of stuff into what I said
that simply is not there, and the rest of your
message is so far out I think this conclusion is...".

Naggum, this is not my problem when you believe other people are not
capable of reading your posts. Then you must not write posts.

S. Gonzi
[By the way. I do not think that Franz Inc. is that devil. I cannot
imagine that a company is greedy when they also give defacto free Lisp
versions for Linux.]

Love is not being "blind when it comes to the bad sides".  People love
not "because of", they love "despite".  I *love* my kid, but I can
tell quite a few things I don't *like* about him.  Now, that's the
whole idea of raising a kid, you can't take out neither love, nor a
critical thinking from the equation - and anything else is an
implementation detail (pedagogy).

Being blind to bad sides of your kid is a good start to raise a
homicidal maniac.  Look what happened to C++ or perl ;).

SY, Uwe
--

http://www.ptc.spbu.ru/~uwe/            |       Ist zu Grunde gehen

I can.  I'm not sure I agree with you on everything, but CL is
far-and-away the best programming language I've ever written in.

--tim

So who *was* that person who sat next to me at the last J13 meeting, I
wonder?

Do you actually have any evidence that most of the CL community
is against Erik, or are you just guessing?

I strongly suspect this mythical CL/N would be quite
close to the existing CL standard.  All Erik seems to
be asking for is that vendors' CLs should be similarly
close, and that customers should come to require
conformance from their vendors.  Is this /so/ unreasonable?

(Have you actually /read/ the article?  Your responses
would make sense if you were reacting purely to the
subject line.)