Re: Justify introducing Lua at my workplace?

[Stephen Kellett <lua@...>]

Don Hopkins wrote:
> Answer this question: do you hate XML and HTML twice as much as you 
hate Lisp, because they have twice as many parenthesis?

No. Because in HTML you never have >>>>> that is illegal whereas )))) is 
legal in Lisp, unless you get the number of them wrong. The comparison 
is invalid.

> The fact that you've never consciously thought about the name of Lisp 
> before, but you still have knee-jerk problem with parenthesis from 20 
> years ago, just goes to support my theory about the cognitive
> dissonance of the name "Lisp" and many people's unconscious
> internalized homophobia.

The problem is I am not homophobic. I thought your comments were a joke.

The other thing is I have never associated someone have a Lisp or any 
form of speech impediment with them being homosexual. I think you'd have 
to be pretty weird to make such an association. Camp behaviour often 
associated with some gay men has nothing to do with Lisping speech, 
nothing whatsoever.

I don't think about "the why" of the names of any computer languages, 
just as I don't think about "the why" the names of my friends or cars or 
trees etc. They are just names, some has historical reasons. But to 
think about the name and then place some weird prejudice based on 
sexuality onto something totally unrelated to sex is, frankly, odd.

Using the rationale I think you are promoting, C++ must be some sort of 
macho language. Not only does it have a penis but its double the length. 
Does this then imply that the C language is feminine? Sorry, but that is 
rot.

I don't have a knee jerk reaction to Lisp. Knee jerk implies sudden 
reaction, typically to something you have no or little experience of. 
Rather than 2 years of "it really shouldn't be this unproductive".

The language has a name. Its a token. The token's value is "Lisp". The 
value of that token has no relation to what experiences I have had with 
that language about 20 years ago. The idea that it does is nonesense. If 
that was true I'd never have tried Python because its the name of 
dangerous snake. Heaven knows how the "Shark" language will fair, if it 
ever is created.

Just because I disagree with you doesn't mean that you can convince me 
that my experiences were wrong with some weird theory that relies on me 
being a homophobe.

I'm not suffering from Cognitive dissonance on this issue. I'm quite 
prepared to accept that other people use Lisp and find it OK. That 
doesn't affect in any way whatsoever my experience with it. Its like 
saying because you like Coffee I should too, when I know for a fact that 
Coffee is disgusting. Life isn't like that and neither is pyschology.

Stephen