Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!ukc!edcastle!expc66
From: expc66@castle.ed.ac.uk (Ulf Dahlen)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: extension languages can be darn small, yet still powerfull
Message-ID: <6073@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 3 Sep 90 10:30:27 GMT
References: <5879.9008301913@subnode.aiai.ed.ac.uk>
Organization: Edinburgh University Computing Service
Lines: 24

In article <5879.9008301913@subnode.aiai.ed.ac.uk> jeff@aiai.edinburgh.ac.UK (Jeff Dalton) writes:
>This is about why people hate Lisp.
>
>> Many of the lisp-haters that I am thinking of used the Xerox InterLisp
>> workstation environment.  What got many people were the structured
>> editors.
>
>I couldn't stand DEDIT (or whatever it was called).  Indeed, I'm not
>a big fan of structure editors in general.  Lisp is my favorite language
>nonetheless.

Why not? I found it much better than any Emacs-style editor when programming
in Lisp. Of course, SEDIT (the successor to DEDIT) is completely different
and *very* much easier to use. Try it.

Since Lisp is a structured language and since much of the teaching tries
to get this point across, I find structure editors very appropriate to use.
Most students either don't understand Lisp or they understand it _and_
like structure editors. That's my experience anyway.


--Ulf Dahlen
Linkoping University, Sweden   and   Edinburgh University, Scotland
Internet: uda@ida.liu.se