Re: Documentation for car and cdr

[Ken Manheimer]

On 1/29/06, Luc Teirlinck <address@hidden> wrote:
> Ken Manheimer wrote:
>
>    language lawyers know what `car' does - you need to ask what clues
>    will help someone who is lost enough to ask.
>
> If that person did `C-h f car' because he did not know what a car was,
> that is, because he does not know the very basics of Lisp, the clue
> that will help him is that he should learn Lisp by studying a manual,
> not by reading docstrings.

congratulations.  you've apparently convinced yourself that anyone
wanting to tinker with any lisp that they're exposed to in the course
of using emacs should learn the language.  that seems absurdly
un-user-friendly to me, particularly considering how many places even
those just wanting to do general editing are exposed to lisp when
using this editor.  customize may insulate people some, but you can't
do hook functions, or twiddle that inherited bit of emacsrc lisp,
without a bit of lisp exposure.  so, to use emacs you must learn lisp.
 to bad for those who just want to edit.

personally, i've grappled successfully many times with small snippets
of code in some foreign language without learning the language.  there
was ragged bits of postscript, in the early days of postscript
printers, bits of tcl or (shudder) perl where they were being used as
extension languages.  the context was usually sufficient - i didn't
have to learn the languages.  i wish, though, i had emacs' excellent
help system to fill me in on just the bits i absolutely had to deal
with.

so, you're telling me that anyone dealing with any bit of emacs lisp
should learn the language.  i can understand better why more people
stick with vi, faced with an attitude like that.  those brave enough
to try emacs, and cutting their teeth on a tiny bit of lisp are bound
to hit a "car" or "cdr", use the spiffy help, and give up in disgust. 
bravo.

> [...]
>     See Info node `(elisp)Cons Cells' for a discussion of related basic
>     Lisp concepts such as car, cdr, cons cell and list.
>
> That last sentence was added by me (on Richard's request) yesterday in
> a desperate, but apparently futile, attempt to make this time wasting
> thread stop.

you mean they don't have to learn the entire language?  that's very
big of you.  i think we could, instead, painlessly provide exactly the
information in the docstring that some will need, by adding:

  (car (cons 'x '(a b c))) ==> 'x

regarding wasting your time - i think you're mistaken about the merits
of the issue - seeing that some of the people using the docstring will
have different needs than your own.

ken
address@hidden