Erik Naggum: Use

“When all actions are used for feedback, the consequence of making mistakes will be a corrective and appropriate response, because everything everybody does matters. … The more selective you are in the feedback you accept, the more insane your reasoning will become as you will necessarily reject corrective feedback that would have led to better reasoning.”

Erik Naggum

Re: Lisp's future http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/ba8f8f34c16d55f3 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

“I believe C++ instills fear in programmers, fear that the interaction of some details causes unpredictable results. Its unmanageable complexity has spawned more fear-preventing tools than any other language, but the solution should have been to create and use a language that does not overload the whole goddamn human brain with irrelevant details.”

Erik Naggum

Re: Checking for Errors Before Run Time http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/41997404227dcc12 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, C++

Fear

“The ultimate laziness is not using Perl. That saves you so much work you wouldn't believe it if you had never tried it.”

Erik Naggum

Re: Lisp as glue language? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/711dfe3ce115d552 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Perl

“People search for the meaning of life, but this is the easy question: we are born into a world that presents us with many millennia of collected knowledge and information, and all our predecessors ask of us is that we not waste our brief life ignoring the past only to rediscover or reinvent its lessons badly.”

Erik Naggum

" Knowledge and Information http://naggum.no/erik/knowledge.html".

Life , People , World , Search

“In Norway, we have a community of people who prefer to use a version of Norwegian that looks very much like lutefisk: Dug up remains from the garbage heap of history and dressed up to look like a tradition.”

Erik Naggum

On nynorsk, from Re: Irish road-signs are now metric http://groups.google.com/group/misc.metric-system/msg/aaa11856a516419a (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

People , History , Communication

“The clumsiness of people who have to engage their brain at every step is unbearably painful to watch, at least to me, and that's what the novice-friendly software makes people do, because there's no elegance in them, it's just a mass of features to be learned by rote. However, this suits people a hell of a lot better than setting out at age 6 to become a great ballet dancer and achieving their goal 20 years later after every tendon and muscle and joint has been asked to perform just a little bit more than nature ever intended over and over and over again. To most people, this is insanity. But in reality, it's art, and it's the art in what we do that makes us human.”

Erik Naggum

read the fine manual, please http://groups.google.com/group/comp.emacs/msg/821a0f04bab91864 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Pain , People , Age , Art

“A novice had a problem and could not find a solution. "I know," said the novice, "I'll just use Perl!" The novice now had two problems.”

Erik Naggum

Re: How is perl braindamaged? (was Re: Is LISP dying?) http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/37b0ddc2524a8214 (Usenet article)
Paraphrasing Jamie Zawinski, and also formulated as "The unemployed programmer had a problem. 'I know,' said the programmer, 'I'll just learn Perl.' The unemployed programmer now had two problems." in his famous "Perl treatise", Re: can lisp do what perl does easily? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/fc76ebab1cb2f863 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Perl

Problem

“All experience has taught us that solving a complex problem uncovers hidden assumptions and ever more knowledge, trade-offs that we didn't anticipate but which can make the difference between meeting a deadline and going into research mode for a year, etc.”

Erik Naggum

Re: is CLOS reall OO? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/917737b7cc8510e3?dmode=source&output=gplain (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Knowledge , Problem

“A "new" language that differs from the rest of the crop by one or a couple features is proof positive that both what it came from and what it has become are mutations about to die. There are tens if not hundreds of thousands of such "languages" that people have invented over the years, for all sorts of weird purposes where they just could not use whatever language they were already using, could not extend it, and could not fathom how to modify its tools without making a whole new language. They never stopped to think about how horribly wasteful this is, they just went on to create yet another language called Dodo, the Titanic, Edsel, Kyoto-agreement …”

Erik Naggum

Re: Representing code as XML: the Flare Programming Language http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/ecea40eb1602ce7c (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

People , Thinking

“More and more, people see that solving any problem is a question of acquiring knowledge and having respect for the cognitive and epistemological processes involved in the human brain: use what you know, learn what you can, and if you have to guess, be aware that you do so you can go back and update your guesses when you (hopefully) learn more.”

Erik Naggum

Re: is CLOS reall OO? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/917737b7cc8510e3?dmode=source&output=gplain (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

People , Question , Knowledge , Problem

“Whoever decided to use the semicolon to end something should just be taken out and have his colon semified. (At least COBOL and SQL managed to use a period.)”

Erik Naggum

Re: Read table modification question. http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/e41a53e66cc1572f (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

“… it's just that in C++ and the like, you don't trust anybody, and in CLOS you basically trust everybody. The practical result is that thieves and bums use C++ and nice people use CLOS.”

Erik Naggum

Re: is CLOS reall OO? http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/07310c842fea847c (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, C++

People

“A system needs to be alive and workable even when other people than the first enthusiasts start using it. Reinvention and revolution are enthusiast stuff. Invention and evolution are engineering.”

Erik Naggum

Re: "Well, I want to switch over to replace EMACS LISP with Guile." http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/6670472eec71d00e (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

People

“When all actions are used for feedback, the consequence of making mistakes will be a corrective and appropriate response, because everything everybody does matters.”

Erik Naggum

… The more selective you are in the feedback you accept, the more insane your reasoning will become as you will necessarily reject corrective feedback that would have led to better reasoning.
Re: Lisp's future http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/ba8f8f34c16d55f3 (Usenet article).
Usenet articles, Miscellaneous

Making love