[BULK] Re: [plt-scheme] still stuck with typed scheme problem: "Expected Attribute, but got Attribute"

On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 11:17 AM, Stephen Bloch <sbloch at adelphi.edu> wrote:
>
> On Apr 30, 2010, at 9:45 AM, Noel Welsh wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:10 PM, Thomas Chust <chust at web.de> wrote:
>>> ... I consulted both an English only dictionary
>>> and an English to German dicitionary and found additional definitions
>>> amounting to "criminal activity / fraud / rip-off". After that I
>>> thought the name wasn't only unfit but probably the worst choice ever
>>> to label a programming language :-/
>>
>> It's a joke. The early software from which Scheme is descended had
>> names like planner and conniver (they did AI planning). Scheme was to
>> be called schemer but the OS limited filenames to six characters.
>> Racket is in the this tradition. See
>> community.schemewiki.org/?scheme-faq-general
>
> Yes, I see that it's "in this tradition", but that doesn't make it a good idea.
>
> How about Cunning instead?  As in "I have a cunning plan...."
>
> Or Clever?
>
> Or something that has at least some positive connotations?
>
> Stephen Bloch
> sbloch at adelphi.edu

What's funny about positive connotations?  We can't consider them a
joke if we actually mean them.  Using the word "racket" as a
euphemistic phrase for a particular line of work is not an uncommon
idiom; we shouldn't be proscribed from using jokes or euphemisms just
because none are 100% universally understood.  Life would be so much
more boring without humor, and I can't think of many particularly good
jokes that live up to the criteria of working across language barriers
or containing only words with positive connotations.

--Carl