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Comment by kagevf | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't come across as "caustic" as when I previously read it. And the "bile" isn't directed so much at Lee as it is at something he wrote; "All in all, the pairs notion is redundant."

Naggum genuinely seems to be hoping that his long and thorough explanation will convince Lee of his point of view, and not as a put down.

> I hope you understand and appreciate what I have written above so the following does not apply to you anymore.

The "following" where he goes off on what Lee wrote, but not on Lee himself.

It might be worth it for me to re-read Naggum's posts, now that I have a better understanding of where he was coming from.

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Not caustic? "Short-sighted users", "stupid language designers who believe too strongly in strong typing", "certainly can't be bothered to invent a useful concept for their short-sighted programmers", "dumb people who implement something the simple way, so it becomes complex and generally useless to everybody else", "unlike today's braindamaged CPU's", "just look at what C programmers do when they need lists! shudder".

Sure, you may believe that LISP is the greatest invention since the sliced bread, and everything went downhill after that but even if you are correct — that's still just, like, your opinion, man.

I wrote "not *as* caustic" ... in particular, he wasn't being caustic toward Lee, but rather to the idea of cons pairs being redundant.

It's enough of distinction to make me think I should re-examine what Naggum had to say - in this and in other posts - and not get caught up in any pre-conceived notions I might have had about him.

It was pretty mild for Naggum. Like the GP I was expecting a higher density of that sort of thing, but maybe my memory is too slanted by his worst flames.

Consider that you may be eavesdropping on the sort of self-talk the author engages in. The clear reasoning mixed with vituperation makes me suspect he probably beats himself up. There is a lot of worry over being mistaken and stupid.

I'm unfamiliar with the author, so I could be way off base.

Unfortunately, from my experience, Xah Lee is someone who will ignore information from others if it requires to correct what he wrote/spoke, especially when he claims something authoritatively when in reality he has no in-depth, if any, information on the subject

He does have a tendency to write off people as “fanatics”.

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