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Politics




Naturally I'm not pissed at Andy. Were I truly pissed, and truly
flaming, my message would have begun, ``Andy, you total and complete
bagbiter, you are such a big loser that they had to extend the
city limits to include....''

My point was that I could imagine someone forwarding Andy's vitriol
to Common-Lisp or ARPA-BBOARDS and thereby lose some allies that
we, who are Scheme lovers one and all, would prefer to not lose if
at all possible. 

Someday I'd like Lucid to be the ``most successful and best-known
supplier of Scheme products,'' on that happy day when Common Scheme
becomes the standard.

Homage, an item of low cost to the RRRS-authors, buys a lot from the
Common Lisp troops. Messages like Andy's, keyboard-in-cheek as they
may be, possibly buy more grief than the fun of typing them gains.

Politics and science are not so radically removed from each other. When
one propose some technical viewpoint, his goal is to have it accepted,
usually before he dies. Having his viewpoint accepted helps his
self-esteem, his quest for fame as a scientist, his reach for tenure. This
isn't much different from politics, in which the goals are probably
self-esteem, fame, and a reach for office.  Although there may be more
technical content to a technical debate, the tactics used in arguing for a
political end really don't differ significantly.

This design committee should aim at producing the best possible Lisp.
If that happens to mean that nothing in it is like the corresponding
thing in Common Lisp, that's fine. All technical debate regarding these
choices should be open. If nothing in Scheme is like the corresponding thing
in Common Lisp simply because Common Lisp is bad, and disjointness is a
goal, then I think this design committee will have blown it.

********************************

On a related note, now that there has been a fair bit of experience with
Common Lisp, it might be worthwhile for this group to ask some of the 
Common Lisp hackers about their experience with the parts of Common Lisp
that the Schemers find objectionable. Similarly, it might be instructive to
look at what the Common Lisp hackers find nice about Common Lisp that might
be surprising.

			-rpg-