Re: [xml-dev] Six Reasons Not to use XML Attributes

[John Cowan <cowan@mercury.ccil.org>]

Len Bullard scripsit:

> True story:  I made the mistake of suggesting to Erik Naggum that LISP
> wasn't the best way to get work done.  He replied by stuffing my email
> inbox with a few thousand pages of LISP documentation.  My IT guy was
> not amused.

I would say, cautiously, that the languages of the Lisp family are a
fine way to get work done for some values of "work".  In skilled hands
they are probably unsurpassed where the work is itself exploratory:
where the domain is poorly understood, or where requirements are few and
vague or changing quickly, or it is very unclear what general methods
are most appropriate.  (Let me squelch in passing the long-held myth
that "Lisp is slow": Lisp-family language implementations almost all
come with compilers as good as the state of the art, except for those
where space trumps speed completely.)

> Bulk is bulky.

That's why postings from this list are sent out with a header that says
"Precedence: bulk".

-- 
MEET US AT POINT ORANGE AT MIDNIGHT BRING YOUR DUCK OR PREPARE TO FACE WUGGUMS
John Cowan      cowan@ccil.org      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan