Let me try to get this straight: Lisp is a language for describing algorithms. This was JohnMcCarthy's original purpose, anyway: to build something more convenient than a Turing machine. Lisp is not about file, socket or GUI programming - Lisp is about expressive power. (For example, you can design multiple object systems for Lisp, in Lisp. Or implement the now-fashionable AOP. Or do arbitrary transformations on parsed source code.) If you don't value expressive power, Lisp ain't for you. I, personally, would prefer Lisp to not become mainstream: this would necessarily involve a dumbing down. -- VladimirSlepnev

I guess, when you're drunk, every woman looks beautiful and every language looks (like) a Lisp :) -- Lament, #[email protected]

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment. -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

What Paul does, and does very well, is to take ideas and concepts that are beautiful in the abstract, and brings them down to a real world level. That's a rare talent to find in writing these days. -- Jeff "hemos" Bates, Director, OSDN; Co-evolver, Slashdot

Sometimes a man with too broad a perspective reveals himself as having no real perspective at all. A man who tries too hard to see every side may be a man who is trying to avoid choosing any side. A man who tries too hard to seek a deeper truth may be trying to hide from the truth he already knows. That is not a sign of intellectual sophistication and "great thinking". It is a demonstration of moral degeneracy and cowardice. -- Steven Den Beste

Don't have good ideas if you aren't willing to be responsible for them. -- Alan Perlis

Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable. ~Theodore N. Vail

Real difficulties can be overcome; it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable. ~Theodore N. Vail

Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. –Gloria Steinem

Don’t let the fear of losing be greater than the excitement of winning. ~Robert Kiyosaki