ram
3/17/2016 11:53:00 PM
Sebastian Christ <rudolfo.christ@gmail.com> writes:
>Arggh. I'm so often in that situation. Knowing I've read something but
>unable to find the specific reference. I hate this.
I know how this feels. Therefore, I now take care to collect
all pertinent quotations in a special file.
There once was a joke about languages in the Usenet I could
not find again. You reminded me of this joke, and so I started
a new search. This time I found it. Has nothing to do with
LISP, but here it is:
A Frenchman, a German and an Englishman were arguing
about which of their respective languages was the best.
The Frenchman said, "French is the language of romance,
the most beautiful language in the world."
The German said, "German is the language of science and
technology, the language most fitted to the needs of the
twentieth century."
And the Englishman said, "Nonsense! There"s only one
decent language, and that"s English.
We English say what we mean - no messing about. Take
this for instance." He held up a light-bulb.
"You Frenchmen call it an 'ampoule'. And you Germans call
it a 'gluhbirne'.
We in England simply call it a light-bulb, which, after
all, is precisely what it is."
You Pascal people write »sin( x )«, and you UPN people write
»x sin«. But in LISP, we write »( sin x )«, which after all,
is precisely what it is - the cons of the atom »sin« and the
list »( x )«.