Re: Why you should not use Tcl

Sharon Hopkins (sharon@netlabs.com)
28 Sep 1994 20:04:13 -0700

In article <36bmt0$f9o@sunforest.mantis.co.uk>,
mathew <mathew@mantis.co.uk> wrote:
>In article <kbibb.780691963@jafar>, Ken Bibb <kbibb@jafar.qualcomm.com> wrote:
>>In <369646$sjl@csnews.cs.Colorado.EDU> Tom Christiansen <tchrist@mox.perl.com> writes:
>>>"Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in."
>>> --Larry Wall in <1994Jul21.173737.16853@netlabs.com>
>
>Actually, I think Scheme and Lisp have bags of visual appeal. I find
>them very poetic.
>
>
>mathew
>[ But then, my favourite poet is e.e. cummings ]

All right, that did it. How many Scheme poems have *you* written?

Write me for a copy of "Camels and Needles: Computer Language Poetry
Meets the Perl Programming Language" (Winter Usenix, 1992).

See below for an example poem. (Note -- it hasn't been updated for perl5;
Larry plugged most of the poetry holes and I haven't had time to find new
ones yet.)

--Sharon Hopkins
sharon@netlabs.com
------------------------------ cut here ------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/perl

APPEAL:

listen (please, please);

open yourself, wide,
join (you, me),
connect (us,together),

tell me.

do something if distressed;

@dawn, dance;
@evening, sing;
read (books,poems,stories) until peaceful;
study if able;

write me if-you-please;

sort your feelings, reset goals, seek (friends, family, anyone);

do not die (like this)
if sin abounds;

keys (hidden), open locks, doors, tell secrets;
do not, I-beg-you, close them, yet.

accept (yourself, changes),
bind (grief, despair);

require truth, goodness if-you-will, each moment;

select (always), length(of-days)

# Sharon Hopkins, Feb. 21, 1991
# listen (a perl poem)
#
# sharon@netlabs.com