Scheme as a virtual machine?

[Raffael Cavallaro]

On 2010-11-22 11:25:34 -0500, scattered said:

> And you don't think that [JH] could write a book about Haskell
> if he honestly came to think that it were a superior all-aroung
> language?

Until he actually does, he has a financial interest in trash-talking 
Haskell. This makes anything he says about Haskell suspect.

>  The fact that he *didn't* mindlessly reject [musical note lang] in favor of
> [Irish Ship Of The Desert] when [musical note lang] came out (despite 
> the fact that at the time his company
> was deeply (exclusively?) invested in [Irish Ship Of The Desert] and 
> arguably had a vested
> interest in having [musical note lang] fail to gain support) suggests 
> that he is able
> to fairly evaluate the merits of other languages.

No, it suggests that he saw that supporting the Irish Ship Of The 
Desert meant going up against Microsoft, so he jumped to the MS 
supported variant of the Donut Dromedary.

You miss the fundamental point; having a financial interest in the 
outcome of a debate makes anything that person says an advertisement 
for his financial interests, not a fair assessment.

> 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.

Just the opposite. A person who makes his living by being paid to 
program in a language he has developed some expertise in (rather than 
selling books on it and training for it) has no financial interest in 
seeing others develop expertise in it - they would just represent 
competition. By contrast, one who sells training and books for a 
language profits directly when others take an interest in that 
language. Their financial interests are in fact opposite.

JH profits when people take an interest in languages he sells training 
for; a working lisp programmer sees additional *competition* when 
someone else develops expertise in common lisp.

> But an advocate isn't a judge. Nobody is handing down binding
> decisions here - they are just advocating their positions.

Now you're arguing our point; JH is an *advocate* with a clear conflict 
of interest which prevents him from presenting anything but the most 
one sided, and therefore largely useless, assessment. His writing 
should be seen as a paid advertisement, not as a fair treatment of 
programming languages.

warmest regards,

Ralph



-- 
Raffael Cavallaro