Seen on Usenet

Remember usenet? That was the internet when I was a wee laddy. Here is an interesting quote I read in a usenet newsgroup today:

On the other hand: Lisp looks like a theoretical
optimum. It has a minimalistic way of structuring
hierarchical data, it has a minimalistic way of
expressing program structure as hierarchical data,
it has a minimalistic way of automatizing
writing program snippets. In this light it is
very well possible that a sufficiently advanced
civilization has Lisp, just as it is entirely possible
that it has a Go-like game. It would be a next
to impossible incident if this civilization had
a Chess-like game or Java because both are much
more arbitrary than Lisp or Go. Who knows how
well those extra-terristial Lispniks do in convincing
their compatriats adopting the language? Maybe
the first signal from space-alien will be a
flame-war between Lispniks and members of the
extra-terrestial equivalent of the ruling Java-mainstream.
(Tin Gherdanarra ...@gmail.com>)