+1 May I also say that there are entire scientific, financial, and accounting communities that should be barred from using Excel?
Cheers -- MA On Jul 22, 2011, at 09:14 , Daniel Pezely wrote: > ... > Lessons learned: (a few more while I'm here) > > 1. Know your audience, and build for the correct users. > > 2. Build the right tool. (I'm a systems programmer; a good stats person > would likely have come up with a better work-flow, likely using R so rich > reports could also be generated quickly.) > > 3. Good language design can be challenging. I would have been better off > (perhaps) stealing SQL or XQuery's FLOWR conventions than inventing my own > "simple" set of commands. (Syntax is another matter... as you know.) > > 4. Being adept at backquotes, comma substitution and unrolling lists is not > necessarily enough skill to create a good, clean DSL implementation. But > keep trying. Do your best to make one for "keeps". Then throw it away, > anyway. It's important to not hold anything back in the first version. Ah, > experience! (I'll likely go at this one again just for the fun of it.) > e.g., unrelated project from years ago: > http://play.org/learning-lisp/html.lisp > > 5. Collaborate: Get input from others. My co-workers who also use Common > Lisp were many time-zones and an ocean away, busy with looming deadlines of > their own. However, their 10 years CL experience to my 5 (and their far > deeper stats familiarity) would certainly have helped here. > > -Daniel -- Marco Antoniotti, Associate Professor tel. +39 - 02 64 48 79 01 DISCo, Università Milano Bicocca U14 2043 http://bimib.disco.unimib.it Viale Sarca 336 I-20126 Milan (MI) ITALY Please note that I am not checking my Spam-box anymore. Please do not forward this email without asking me first. _______________________________________________ pro mailing list pro@common-lisp.net http://lists.common-lisp.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pro
