Re: Why Python When There Is Perl?

rbowman wrote this copyrighted missive and expects royalties:

On Thu, 21 Mar 2024 06:31:57 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
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On 21 Mar 2024 06:29:02 GMT, rbowman wrote:
 

I could see the logic and how it worked although my brain kept asking
'why would anyone in their right mind do it this way?'

 
Try doing it in some more conventional language like Java or C♯, and you
will soon appreciate some of the wonders of the Lisps.

>
No, I would not. As I worked through the exercises I was mentally
calculating how I would do it in C. Lisp is very much an acquired taste.
If you want to talk about lexical oddities, there's the 73 stacked up
parens. Vim will match them up but still...  Then there is 'car' and 'cdr'
which iirc were assembler instructions on a computer that was last seen in
an archaeological dig next to a partial brontosaurus skull.
>
I shouldn't be so snotty. After all I used Forth back in the day and
threaded interpreted languages are a wonder to behold. I met Chuck Moore
at a Forth conference and if you've done that you can understand the
language.

When I worked at the VA, we had a fancy audiometer that had Forth built into
it.

Later, I used a MIDI editor for the Atari ST, called "EditTrack", which I
believe was written in Forth.  I met the authors at small Atari Convention
in North Hollywood.  (Also saw IIRC Paul Haslinger showing off some music from
"Risky Business", and a talk by a tall, dour Mick Fleetwood.)

https://colorforth.github.io/bio.html
>
He learned Lisp and it damaged him for life.

--
So she went into the garden to cut a cabbage leaf to make an apple pie;
and at the same time a great she-bear, coming up the street pops its head
into the shop. "What! no soap?" So he died, and she very imprudently
married the barber; and there were present the Picninnies, and the Grand
Panjandrum himself, with the little round button at top, and they all
fell to playing the game of catch as catch can, till the gunpowder ran
out at the heels of their boots.
-- Samuel Foote