From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/31063 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Felix Lee Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: Python Emacs (was Re: The .. rule) Date: Thu, 18 May 2000 05:27:20 -0700 Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: <20000518122748.37F6DD051E@mailhost.sclp.com> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035167515 11901 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 02:31:55 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 02:31:55 +0000 (UTC) Cc: ding@gnus.org Return-Path: Original-Received: from lisa.math.uh.edu (lisa.math.uh.edu [129.7.128.49]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A021DD051E for ; Thu, 18 May 2000 08:28:16 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu (lists@Sina.HPC.UH.EDU [129.7.3.5]) by lisa.math.uh.edu (8.9.1/8.9.1) with ESMTP id HAB15425; Thu, 18 May 2000 07:28:11 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Thu, 18 May 2000 07:27:39 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from mailhost.sclp.com (postfix@sclp3.sclp.com [204.252.123.139]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id HAA15876 for ; Thu, 18 May 2000 07:27:26 -0500 (CDT) Original-Received: from mail1.teleport.com (mail1.teleport.com [192.108.254.26]) by mailhost.sclp.com (Postfix) with SMTP id 37F6DD051E for ; Thu, 18 May 2000 08:27:48 -0400 (EDT) Original-Received: (qmail 5147 invoked from network); 18 May 2000 12:27:47 -0000 Original-Received: from ip216-26-43-114.dsl.du.teleport.com (HELO teleport.com) (216.26.43.114) by mail1.teleport.com with SMTP; 18 May 2000 12:27:47 -0000 Original-To: Brian May In-reply-to: on 18 May 2000 10:10:11 +1000. Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:31063 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:31063 Brian May : > My main dislike of LISP, is in my experience LISP programs seem > rather fragile and not robust compared with other programming languages. > When something goes wrong with a LISP program, more often then not, I > get a LISP error that means nothing to me. I send bug reports, etc, part of this is lack of static checking. most lisp relies on run-type checking of types and function arguments and stuff, so if code is never exercised, then you'll never notice the errors. this is a class of bugs that doesn't turn up (much) in a language like C. (though some lisp compilers will do a large amount of static checking, partly as a side effect of trying to safely remove run-time checks. but emacs lisp doesn't do this.) on the other hand, lisp doesn't have runtime pointer or malloc errors. you don't get bus errors or segvs or memory leaks or buffer overruns that cause strange results or security holes (except for the occasional bug in the underlying lisp runtime support). memory corruption errors are almost impossible to locate in large C programs, but they don't happen in lisp. so there are tradeoffs. on the whole, I think I prefer lisp over C, but really, they just need different types of programming discipline, different types of paranoia on the part of the programmer. inexperienced programmers will write shoddy code in either language, for different reasons. ok, lisp vs C isn't a fair comparison. lisp vs perl might be a better comparison, but it's a complicated issue and tends to drift into religious wars. --