C vs. Lisp. Sad.

[p2@porter.asl.dialnet.symbolics.com (Peter Paine)]

    Date: Sat, 19 Jan 91 00:09:25 -0800
    From: magerman@Neon.Stanford.EDU

     [...]
     I don't think we will get very far with this argument, because of the strength
     of our opinions, but I'd be glad to continue discussing it anyway.  Who knows?
     Maybe one of us will have a revelation. I worked on LispMs for two years
     [...]

How sad that you never had exposure to someone with experience of Lisp
Machine applications, I'm sure that any one of them would have been
happy to help you with your problems.

Having myself been starved of the customary introduction to Lisp using
list construction and recursion, it has always been a puzzle to me how
people can get addicted to consing at the highest level of abstraction,
then feel genuine indignation as the machine is flattened with garbage.

All of us with some feeling for what Lisp Machines can do, what the
philiosphy is about, are worried at the number of prominant opinion
makers whose experience seems to be bounded by Winston & Horn.

Do we need a healthy competition to expose a few home truths?
Say starting with number crunching C v Lisp.