[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

As long as we're sending out songs...



			     Common LISP
		(to the tune of Dylan's "Maggie's Farm")

I ain't gonna hack on Common LISP no more,
I ain't gonna hack on Common LISP no more.
See, it was spawned from MACLISP,
And then they threw in Scheme,
And now everybody's made it
"just a little" short of clean.
The language specification is insane.

I ain't gonna hack on Guy Steele's LISP no more,
I ain't gonna hack on Guy Steele's LISP no more.
When you mail him a question,
And then wait for a reply,
Well you can sit for weeks now,
And begin to think he's died.
His MAIL.TXT is one great big black hole.

I ain't gonna hack on Fahlman's LISP no more,
I ain't gonna hack on Fahlman's LISP no more.
Well he gives you an X-1,				[1]
And he puts you on a Perq,
And he asks you with a grin,
"Hey son, how much can you work?"
If I reboot one more time I'll lose my brain.

I ain't gonna hack on Dave Moon's LISP no more,
I ain't gonna hack on Dave Moon's LISP no more.
We had a simple SETF,
But it choked on LDB.
So Lunar Dave done fixed it:
Go look at page eighty three.				[2]
The Gang of Five they didn't take a poll.		[3]

I ain't gonna hack on Common LISP no more,
I ain't gonna hack on Common LISP no more.
With its tons of sequence functions,
And its lexical scoping,
I've now begun to like it,
But the users are moping:
"Without EXPLODE my life is full of pain."		[4]

(harmonica and fade)

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Notes:

1.  An "X-1" is the key required to access CMU CSD facilities.
2.  83 was the page number describing Define-Setf-Method in the Mary Poppins
    edition.  It's probably changed.
3.  There aren't verses for Weinreb and Gabriel because the orginal song has
    only 3 verses about people.  I couldn't think of anything clever to say
    about them, anyway.
4.  Yes, we really had users complaining about the lack of EXPLODE and friends.

No offense is intended towards any people named or unnamed.