Scheme as a virtual machine?

[scattered]

On Nov 22, 9:45 am, Raffael Cavallaro
<raffaelcavall... at pas.despam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote:
> On 2010-11-22 08:12:27 -0500, MarkHanif... at gmail.com said:
>
> > All opinions are biased.
>
> All opinions show some bias. Not all opinions represent what is usually
> called a "conflict of interest." Since JH makes his living selling
> tools and training for certain languages, he has a severe conflict of
> interest wrt asessing the value of various other languages. If these
> other languages are just as good or better than those he makes his
> living from, it would be very damaging to his livlihood for him to
> admit this fact. As a result, he is a completely unreliable source on
> the question.
>

And you don't think that Jon Harrop could write a book about Haskell
if he honestly came to think that it were a superior all-aroung
language? The fact that he *didn't* mindlessly reject F# in favor of
O'Caml when F# came out (despite the fact that at the time his company
was deeply (exclusively?) invested in O'Caml and arguably had a vested
interest in having F# fail to gain support) suggests that he is able
to fairly evaluate the merits of other languages. Doubtless he has
biases, but there is no reason to think that they are any greater than
the bias of any programmer who has invested substantial amounts of
time in becoming fluent in a particular language.

> This is why judges must recuse themselves from both civil and criminal
> trials if they have some significant conflict of interest.

But an advocate isn't a judge. Nobody is handing down binding
decisions here - they are just advocating their positions. It would be
better to compare JH to a defense lawyer. You can't reject the
defense's arguments just because the lawyer has a vested interest in
the outcome of the trial.

> the law recognizes that we cannot expect a fair judgement from someone who
> stands to profit significantly if the judgement goes one way or the
> other. Similarly, we cannot expect a fair judgement on the relative
> value of various language tools from a person whose livlihood depends
> on the audience choosing only those certain language tools that he
> sells services and training for.
>
> warmest regards,
>
> Ralph
>
> --
> Raffael Cavallaro