From: Bill Richter (richter@math.northwestern.edu) Subject: Re: endless onanism about semantics Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme Date: 2004-09-01 21:34:23 PST bjl@cs.purdue.edu (Bradley J Lucier) responded to Shriram Krishnamurthi in message news:... >Bill Richter has explicitly said (privately, but given me >permission to quote him) he has no stake in the Scheme community. >He is using the newsgroup as a medium to advance his career. He >doesn't care how many people he drives away. This is total speculative bullshit. Thanks for the support, Brad! The problem is, I did actually say something like that to Shriram privately, and I maybe should've gone to more trouble to make myself clear. Why don't I do so now: I don't *now* have any stake in the Scheme community. Isn't that obvious? The 700+ line DS->Scheme interpreter Shriram got me to post here is about the longest Scheme program I've ever written, and I'm not anywhere close to being employed as a programmer, or a CS prof. I do have some minor weird chances left in the pure Math racket. But I'd like to have a stake in the Scheme community. I'd like to say that Scheme is a Math-friendly language. I'd like to say that my pure Math skills mean something in the Scheme, and maybe I can even use Math to trampoline myself far above my lack of programming skill. Shriram's TSB is, "He is using the newsgroup as a medium to advance his career." How could I possibly advance my career in any way except that convinced cls folks that I was a contributor in some way? Say, by clarifying the notion of compositionality (even in non-useful way). Anton vS quoted me more or less correctly, [He's] uncomfortable with accepting help if he can't offer anything in return Isn't everyone that way? How much help will any of us get if we don't offer anything in return? What can I offer, except pure Math? Now if Anton, Shriram, or other cls folks think they're better at pure Math than I, and that the pure Math I've posted is nonsense... Well, they have haven't made much of a case for this yet, but re Anton's point: I can't expect much help from them, then, can I?