it is impossible to argue with people who have detached their emotional
involvement in a language (which any language worth using will inspire in
its users) from rational appreciation of its role, relevance, and value.
Scheme is the only language I have ever seen where people will actually
argue in _favor_ of its flaws, explicitly or implicitly by some stupid
non-argument about some other language. once upon a time, I used to think
that a language (SGML) had such wondrous potential that I would ignore all
present flaws and practical problems. I gradually came to understand that
that potential would never be realized, precisely because nobody cared to
fix the present flaws and practical problems -- those who saw the potential
ignored them and talked about how SGML changed the idea of information and
all that fine management-level nonsense, and those who had to deal with
them just found ways to live with them, even arguing against changes!