Re: Justify introducing Lua at my workplace?

[David Haley <dchaley@...>]

Sorry for the top-post: this is just a quick comment.

I find it bordering on the offensive to suggest that somebody who
doesn't like Lisp, or even spreads FUD about it, is somehow homophobic.
To make a suggestion of my own, would it be a problem to divert this
discussion away from the Lua list, especially if we're going to keep
talking about how people who don't like Lisp are closet homophobes?

Cheers,
- David

p.s. Here's a data point for you: I am American, but had never heard of
the term 'gay lisp' before... so I guess I've been living on a different
planet! :-) And incidentally, not everybody watches that much American
television...
And on that note, no more noise from me about this topic.


On this day of 11/28/2007 05:21 AM, Don Hopkins saw fit to scribe:
>> 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.
> )))) is legal in C, C++, Lua, Pascal, JavaScript, and most other 
> languages, so what's wrong with that? The comparison is not invalid. XML 
> requires twice as many angled brackets as Lisp requires parenthesis, to 
> express the same structure.
>> The problem is I am not homophobic. I thought your comments were a joke.
> Yeah, and Larry Craig is not gay, or so he says, again and again. Of 
> course my comments were a joke, but there's a kernel of truth that makes 
> it so funny. What's even funnier is how upset they make some people, who 
> can't come up with any better arguments against Lisp than "too many 
> parenthesis".
>> 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.
> Are you saying that with a straight face, or is that a joke? What planet 
> have you been living on? Have you ever watched American television? I'm 
> talking about widely held stereotypes, not the actual behavior of all 
> real gay people.
> 
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gay_lisp
> "A gay lisp is actually not a lisp but refers to stereotypical speech 
> attributes assigned to and sometimes heard in gay males.[1][2] These 
> attributes have proven difficult to define and quantify but seem 
> independent of other variables in the phonology of the English language, 
> such as accent and register.[3]"
> 
>> 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.
> Would you really name a programming language after the Dutch word for 
> "prick", if you knew that was what it meant? Trying to separate human 
> psychology from programming language design is quite odd! Programmers 
> are users of programming languages, so programming language design is 
> user interface design, which has a whole lot to do with psychology. If 
> you had come up with some valid criticisms of Lisp, I wouldn't have 
> brought up homophobia and cognitive dissonance. But you trotted out that 
> tired old "too many parenthesis" argument on your own.
>> 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.
> Lots of people use Perl and C++ in a way they think makes them macho. In 
> the words of the brilliant programmer Ian Bicking:
> 
> http://blog.ianbicking.org/code-pickiness.html
> "It amazes me that Perl programmers complain about Lisp's parenthesis, 
> then they go write programs that look like line noise, on purpose. Some 
> actually savor Perl syntax, thinking it makes them more manly. It's like 
> voting for Bush because he puts on a macho act, even though you know 
> that his policies are horrible and he's a liar."
>> 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".
> Why were you so unproductive? Maybe it's not the language's fault, but 
> your own. Did you use punched cards instead of an intelligent text 
> editor? What were you trying to do with it?
>> 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.
> People don't have cognitive dissonance about snakes and sharks as much 
> as they have it about homosexuality. People usually acknowledge their 
> fears of snakes and sharks, and those fears are actually justified. 
> Cognitive dissonance means that you are in a state of denial, the same 
> way a closeted homosexual like Larry "Wide Stance" Craig is in denial 
> and does not consciously realize that he's gay, even though he can 
> consciously remember repeatedly having sex with men in airport bathrooms.
>> 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.
> You were probably just brought up in a homophobic culture, and many 
> people internalize it without realizing it. Or do you deny that the 
> culture you were brought up in is homophobic? What culture was that, the 
> Netherlands maybe?
>> 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
> Well if you're not homophobic, then why are you spreading FUD about 
> Lisp? The "too many parenthesis" argument is ridiculous!
> 
>     -Don
> 
> 


-- 
~David-Haley
http://david.the-haleys.org