Re: Mathematica and Lisp
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg120017] Re: Mathematica and Lisp
- From: Richard Fateman <fateman at cs.berkeley.edu>
- Date: Tue, 5 Mar 2013 04:17:45 -0500 (EST)
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On 3/3/2013 7:58 PM, John Doty wrote: > On Sunday, March 3, 2013 12:21:31 AM UTC-7, Richard Fateman wrote: > >> C is not my favorite programming language .. see >> >> www.cs.berkeley.edu/~fateman/papers/software.pdf > > But in many cases it *is* the favorite language of people with real problems to solve. For sure it is the favorite programming language of people who know no other programming language. It is certainly possible to write programs that have bugs or are hard to understand in Lisp. For example, one cause of bugs is that the programmer is incompetent. I think that article is clear enough about how certain common errors in C programs simply cannot happen in some other programming languages. There are bugs that occur in EF that are probably impossible to exhibit in any other programming language. Some of them ready to bite the unwary. sin(x) for example. <snip> > > These are not significant problems for those of us who use the language rather than fighting it. I have a friend whose country house has electricity, gas, telephone, and wifi/internet. But he heats his house with a wood burning stove. He apparently does not find this a significant problem. Sometimes there is no accounting for tastes. RJF