MZan @mzan@qoto.org

@amoroso I never used CORBA, but my impression is that it was simply the wrong paradigm for distributed applications: cooperating distributed objects are too much fine-grained, and the communication overhead can kill the performances, better using distributed services with a service-oriented API; trying to hide the fact that an object can be remote instead of local creates problems, because code is usually not transparent to these aspects; etc...

In Erlang, the Actor paradigm follows the contrary approach of CORBA: Actors are remote by default, and if they are local it is simply better for the performances. So one can decompose the problem using already a distributed friendly API.

@rml

> RMS obviously lead those attacks, pretending he didn't

Without further evidence, it is not obvious to me.

> I don't feel like going through the troves of mailing list discourse at the moment

Fair, but then I will consider what you said as personal opinion that can be true, but I cannot know with certainty because me too I have no time to search in the archives 🙂 I hoped you had quick to reach info. Sorry.

> if he condoned the gross behaviour that is going on in that post

If I accuse you to be a pedophile, X ask to remove you from your job, and some Y attack X on some random website, why do you should be obliged to defend X? The attacks received from RMS where a lot more stronger than the link you sent me against Y.

@rml

first you said

> He's lead attacks on several GNU maintainers,

then

> not he himself, but his minions

that IMHO it is not so much "fair".

You said

> its in actuality just an attempt to destroy those projects in revenge for speaking out against the defense of Minsky.

Is there some RMS message, where he is saying crazy things to the maintainers, putting unucessary stress on their work, with the aim to sabotage them?

Full disclosure: I'm in general against CoC, and I rather like https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/kind-communication.html So, if I have no counter information, I'm rather biased in favor of RMS, also if for sure he is not perfect.

@rml

I have links of OSS developers attacking RMS: https://guix.gnu.org/blog/2019/joint-statement-on-the-gnu-project/ https://rms-open-letter.github.io/

Have you some link, where RMS is attacking GNU maintaners? So I can educate better myself, and see more details about the situation.

@ringtailringo @daviwil IMHO, Lisp is very good for prototyping new applications because you can choose between different programming paradigms, and compose them. You can choose also between different run-times. Hence, you have a lot of freedom and power.

If you are working in a domain using main stream languages, where there are maintained libraries with good abstractions and paradigms, then the benefits of Lisp are less clear.

@mindfulzombie @aziz I agree 100%.

Also now days a lot of work is understanding and reusing frameworks and libraries. In the past it was more common writing low level code and had-hoc data structures, and creating a skeleton of a framework.

@louis@emacs.ch Common Lisp can coexist and compete with C/C++, and Clojure with Java.

Racket has a lot of features but it lacks a clear positioning from the point of view of marketing. The Language-Oriented-Paradigm is a good aspect, but it is not yet associated to some precise "marketing advantage". There is no yet some killer framework, using Racket. It is difficult to think to a precise usage scenario "owned" by Racket.

Also in the academic world, Racket is seen probably as a "toy", respect Haskell, Idris and other PL. So, it has not their same charisma, despite it has a very good and interesting type system.

@freemo a kalashnikov - if you are attacked by the human who put the knights armor on the bear 🙂

@freemo @deegeese It is sad to say, but it is unlikely that you can defend yourself with a gun against a mafia killer. He has too much advantage because he can decide when to shoot. In any case keep the gun. It can help.

Probably a better strategy is writing about your experience, keep us informed, inform your friends and give them access to your account in case someone kill you. If the mafia knows that if someone kill you, there will be a lot of publicity about the actors you accused, they can be "scared" of the consequences. Mafia does not like media exposure.

@solidsanek I voted Rat, but you are giving a platform to "Cats" party and I'm not feeling safe 🙂

@freemo Now we laugh, later we will fight against this proposal, then they win 🙂

@amcooper I don't write many Lisp code, but I started with Racket because it has a very good documentation and many interesting libraries. But then I switched to Common Lisp because it has a live/interactive programming environment, and it is very fun/addictive to use. It is easy entering in the zone, using CL.

But every Lisp dialect has its benefit. For example you can make money working on Clojure, and it is an acceptable Lisp. Guix has less libraries than Racket, but it has an acceptable live environment.

Scheme in general is more elegant than CL, but it lacks interesting features like CLOS, MOP, and advanced error management.

My two cents are: if you want to replace C++ with a Lisp, then CL; if you want to replace Java, then Clojure.

@edfattell Church of Emacs is a religion where you had to work on Sunday because you spent the rest of the week customizing and adoring it 🙂

@dajb short version answer: https://mastodon.social/@samim/109451202603050701

😃

@dajb The best persons I ever meet, "act professionally", without "acting professionally". They work in the best possible way, but showing their true personality. They are not robots. They are good coworkers, customers or "service providers", because you have both professional work, but with a human touch and a rather sincere feedback. They try to put in your shoes for solving your problem, and you understand if there are things to solve on your side. In this way, it is more difficult that problems escalate to unmanageable levels.

The difficult thing is how to "react professionally" when there are unresolvable personal problems between people. In this case, if there is no hope to find a solution, I start acting professionally, reducing at minimum the possibility of rage, but becoming fake. Also the other will notice this, but no problem at all. We must coexist with damage limitation.

@joelle I cannot follow you. This study https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8099405/ suggests that selection criteria are useful because regrets are very low, 1%. And you said initially that the regrets in the wild west of breast augmentation is 20%. So this is already a proof that some regolumentation is beneficial.

We can discuss if the 20% of regrets are linked also to the low quality of some surgeon, and not only to patients not knowing really what they want. But, the difference is rather large.

@joelle the study suggests that the mental approval process is beneficial, because there is a low regret rate. They say:

> We believe this study corroborates the improvements made in regard to selection criteria for GAS.

So the low regret rate is the effect of the selection criteria.

One can discuss about how to determine if the selection filter is too much stringent, but not that it is not useful.

@amszmidt @louis@emacs.ch
> The only programming languages who have this dumb ass discussion is Lisp and Scheme.

Is Delphi a (dialect of) Pascal? Is VisualBasic a Basic? Is Self a Smalltalk? Yes and no.

Scheme is a "list processing" language, with macros. It is heavily inspired to Lisp, but it is also rather different. Hence, informally, it is called a language of the family of Lisp-like languages. Shortly, "a Lisp".

Scheme is not Lisp. I agree. But it is a language on the same family. So it is only a "war of terms". "a Lisp", "a dialect of Lisp", etc...

@akater @louis@emacs.ch @amszmidt BTW, Haskell is not a Lisp, and I never read this. Instead, I read often "R is a Lisp" and "Ruby is a Lisp". Apart this, I mainly agree with your comment.

@louis@emacs.ch @amszmidt

> Clearly, as an enlightened Lisper, you must be aware that JavaScript is a Lisp-1?

It starts to become a too much enlarged family for my taste. Now I suspect that JavaScript has Lisp as parent-1 and Java has parent-2 😃