Re: Unpleasantness

[CS.UTAH.EDU!shebs%defun@ucbvax.berkeley.edu (Stanley T. Shebs)]

>    Usually I refrain from becoming involved in squabbles about the
>apparent quality of one or another person's code.  I can remember such
>arguments when I was very small -- something of the form "My daddy is
>bigger and stronger than your daddy.", so it usually feels a bit
>childish to fight about things like that.

I suppose we really belong to different communities.  In the community I
come from, "apparent quality" of code is a serious issue, possibly involving
multi-million dollar expenses, so it doesn't seem particularly "childish" to
discuss such matters.  In the Scheme community, the same issue seems to be
considered unimportant, and I apologize for bringing it up and being
unnecessarily disruptive.

>In this case, however, you
>have said some rather unpleasant things about very good friends of
>mine, and they are feeling quite bad about it, so I feel compelled to
>respond.

Again, I'm sorry to have insulted anybody - that was not my intention.

>[...]  I also suggest that if you want to
>fight out the technical details I will be pleased to meet with you at
>the Lisp Conference in Snowbird.  Perhaps we will both learn something
>useful in that context.

Perhaps - although I'm afraid our viewpoints are too different.  For example,
(now I'm going to get flamed!), I find the differences between Scheme and
Common Lisp to be mostly uninteresting, but consider that the design of
efficient implementations is the most critical issue facing Lisp dialects
today.  If you are still willing to communicate given all that, I would be
very pleased to do so!

								stan