• Re: Control of Human Language [was: Apprenticeship]

    From B. Pym@Nobody447095@here-nor-there.org to comp.lang.lisp on Mon Jun 23 08:34:37 2025
    From Newsgroup: comp.lang.lisp

    (defun munge-list (lst)
    (labels ((helper (l a)
    (if (null l)
    a
    (helper (cdr l) (cons (munge (car a)) a)))))
    (reverse (helper lst ()))))

    looks. There's nothing wrong with expressing the idea that way.
    There is something wrong with doing so in Common Lisp, though,
    particularly if one is a CL'er who is just trying to import Scheme's
    hatred of iteration. That's fine for them in their language, and it's
    going to be an accent that comes through when they speak CL, which is
    also just fine. However, claiming that the above should be preferred
    over

    (defun munge-list (list)
    (loop for elt in list
    collecting (munge elt)))

    is not okay. It's perverting a perfectly good language, not to
    optimize for communication, but to make it a cheap imitation of a
    perfectly good language that already exists.


    Another worshipper of CL (COBOL-Like) and LOOP that has no
    affinity whatsoever for Lispy programming.

    (map abs '(0 -2 4 -6))

    (0 2 4 6)

    Is it true that users of CL inspired the making of
    the movie "Idiocracy"?
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