Knee-jerk Anti-LOOPism and other Email Phenomena (1993)

Occasionally, however, spontaneous outbursts of frustration did appear. As one participant said "We each had times when we ran out of control." For example, the issue of whether to retain the LOOP operator in Common LISP generated extensive debate. Eventually one participant, in an apparently spontaneous outburst, sent a message with the comment:

> I am sick to death of knee-jerk anti-LOOPism and I am beginning to irrationally regard it as a plot to disable me as a programmer by excommunicating my useful tools.

This outburst was not allowed to pass without comment, however. Another participant stepped in at this point, with what he later described to us as a "voice of reason," rebuking the spontaneous outburst and smoothing the waters:

> it seems to me that expressions like "knee-jerk anti-LOOPist" are highly unprofessional and have no place in this discussion. they only serve to divide people into two camps and do very little good. ... please, resist the urge to do name-calling. with the general level of passion individuals have on particular issues, we just can't afford to lose track of that we're working together, not against each other.

Interesting discussion on the introduction of the smiley.

"In some cases, the participants used the visual representation of writing to achieve the spontaneity and humor more characteristic of speech. For example, the graphic of a sideways smiley face ":-)" was used to indicate that something was to be taken as a joke. According to The New Hacker's Dictionary (Raymond, 1991) and to our interviews, one of the key participants in the CL group had introduced this device a year or two earlier on an electronic bulletin board system."