* * * * *
                                        
                       Gee, another Lisp written in Lisp
                                        
It looks like Paul Graham's [1] new language Arc [2] has been released [3]
(link via lemonodor [4]). I was reading over the announcement when I saw
this:

> In exploratory programming, the fact that it's unclear what a list
> represents is an advantage, because you yourself are unclear about what
> type of program you're trying to write. The most important thing is not to
> constrain the evolution of your ideas. So the less you commit yourself in
> writing to what your data structures represent, the better.
> 

“Arc's Out [5]”

What is it with programmers?

Did I not get the memo?

Are programmers incapable of thinking when writing code? Or is thinking a
form of premature optimization?

I'm beginning to think mainstream programmers must think that thinking is a
form of premature optimization, because they sure as hell go out of their way
to keep from thinking when writing code.

I then read:

> Arc embodies a similarly unPC (Politically Correct) attitude to HTML
> (HyperText Markup Language). The predefined libraries just do everything
> with tables. Why? Because Arc is tuned for exploratory programming, and the
> W3C-approved way of doing things represents the opposite spirit.
> 
> Tables are the lists of html [sic]. The W3C doesn't like you to use tables
> to do more than display tabular data because then it's unclear what a table
> cell means. But this sort of ambiguity is not always an error. It might be
> an accurate reflection of the programmer's state of mind. In exploratory
> programming, the programmer is by definition unsure what the program
> represents.
> 

“Arc's Out [6]”

And any interest I might have had in looking at Arc goes sailing out the
window.

I'm currently working on a PHP application (we're pretty much taking it over
since it's no longer being supported by anyone) and I've been ripping out all
the <TABLE> based layout and replacing it with much simpler HTML, with CSS
(Cascading Style Sheets) for layouts. It's making the PHP code much easier to
deal with.

Hmm … perhaps I don't understand what “exploratory programming” means.
Perhaps it's randomly typing on the keyboard when you have a vaugue idea that
you want a program, never mind what it does, just that you want one? Or
perhaps it's doing the work of a compiler and checking data types at run time
by hand? Or perhaps they like micromanaging code [7]?

I don't know.

Even worse—Arc only supports ASCII (American Standard Code for Information
Interchange). In the 70s? Okay. 80s? Sure. 90s? Maybe for legacy code. But
today?

Supporting just ASCII

Yup. To me, that says Paul Graham is a muddleheaded thinker [8].

Update a few minutes later

Yup, seems like some other people find HTML plus CSS easier to deal with [9]
than a <TABLE> based layout.


[1] http://paulgraham.com/
[2] http://arclanguage.org/
[3] http://paulgraham.com/arc0.html
[4] http://lemonodor.com/archives/2008/01/arc_released_2.html
[5] http://paulgraham.com/arc0.html
[6] http://paulgraham.com/arc0.html
[7] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/01/26.2
[8] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2006/06/05.1
[9] http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/6710p/comments/#c0313pg

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

.