cicero · HackerTrans

If there is no objective reality, then what is the explanation for the overlap of our subjective experiences? By the way, you do bring up a good reason for the existence of God as the only one who knows all of reality. However, God does not know reality by perception. Rather, God is the source of reality, so he knows it because it begins in his mind.

cicero

8 lat temudiscuss

Perception of reality is not the same for everybody, but there is a single objective reality that we all perceive in our imperfect ways.

cicero

8 lat temudiscuss

Of course one shouldn't jump into a thread to say "I don't know", but if someone receives a response to a statement they made in a thread that points out a fact or point of view they hadn't considered, they should be willing to admit that they didn't know that, they were wrong, or that they realize they need to think more deeply about the topic.

cicero

11 lat temudiscuss

> Why do people who write or talk about Lisp always have to start with something like this?

Because to them it is awesome. People are different, and just because it isn't awesome to you doesn't mean it can't be for others. For me, I was impressed because Lisp overcame so many limitations I found in other languages.

When it comes to readability, I think that a lot of it is what you are used to. I do not use Lisp all of the time, so when I switch back to it, some time is required for me to get back into the groove where it becomes readable, and then it's second nature. (I teach multiple computer science courses using different languages, and switching gears from class to class can be a challenge.)

All of that being said, the greater use of punctuation and syntactic forms in other languages can aid in readability, but I don't think it is significant enough to completely offset the power you gain from the Lisp syntax.

cicero

11 lat temudiscuss

I started with K&R as a college senior, 31 years ago. I found it tough going, but rewarding. It's a good book, but as others have said, you don't want to miss out on things that have been learned about C since it was written, including safety issues.

cicero

14 lat temudiscuss

I started with Integer BASIC on an Apple II the summer of 1978. I went on to Applesoft BASIC, and then Apple Pascal.

When I went to Texas A&M in 1981, I started in Electrical Engineering, and took courses in FORTRAN and IBM 360/370 Assembly. I enjoyed those so much that I changed my major to Computer Science. We used PL/I for data structures class, and in the Programming Languages Survey we focused on Ada and Prolog, with brief mentions of other languages. I did a little bit of work for an Engineering professor in Turbo Pascal.

For my senior project, I got to use the CS department's new VAX 11/750 running BSD Unix. For my project I taught myself C so that I could assist a grad student on his "syntax-directed text editor" project. I've been in love with Unix and C ever since then, but didn't get to use it at work for several years.

My first real job out of college started June 1985, and it was programming interactive training systems running in a proprietary courseware design system on Sony CP/M Z-80 computers and Laser Videodisc players. The courseware system was buggy, so I talked my group into using C instead, which allowed us to be more responsive, have less crashes, and put more content on a floppy disk. The Z-80 C compiler was produced by BSD Software, which stood for "Brain-Damaged Software". It was so named because they didn't support floating point math, but that was ok because we could get by with various tricks and get done what we needed to do.

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