On 1/8/06, Robert Strandh <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Personally, I think the 10 minute restriction is silly,
and yet, I can install and use most cpan libraries in that time
period. Turns out I can do it with edi weitz' cl-ppcre too, thanks to
a lucky guess as to the function name I wanted.
> and reflects
> the short attention span of the MTV-generation, which is probably
> partly responsible for the relatively low popularity of Common Lisp
> itself.
I completely agree; if common lisp cant solve my problem as quickly
as, say, Perl, it's no wonder its unpopular among 20somethings >: b
> Many packages would take much longer than that. Imagine for instance
> an incremental LR parser generator, which might be very complicated
> and require some theoretical understanding. Or, to cite something
> close to my own interests, the "obseq" library that incrementally
> divides a sequence of objects into optimal subsequences. It would be
> very hard to even understand the problem it is trying to solve in 10
> minutes, let alone understanding how to use it in your software.
Yeah, and people spend entire semesters studying the theory behind
regular expressions. But if you're looking for a regex library, you
know what a regex is, just like if you're looking for a unit test
library, you know what software testing is. You shouldn't have to
wade through pages of documentation to find the lisp equivalent of
if ( $target_string =~ m/$regex/ ) {
. . . . regex matched, so do some stuff . . . .
}
It should be on the very first page, preferably before an extended
description of why the library is cool. The library is cool if it is
immediately obvious that it solves my problem in a timely fashion.
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