> The verb will be more or less derived from the noun. A verbless noun makes sense, but a nounless verb? I think there is some dependency. Linguistically inacc

> The verb will be more or less derived from the noun. A verbless noun makes sense, but a nounless verb? I think there is some dependency. Linguistically inaccurate. But it also seems irrelvant. "Zipping things" is a great example of a placeholder noun, anything that can be zippable, right? People do this all the time. "Driving" implies that you have a thing to drive, but the act of driving is clear and distinct in people's heads despite the fact that it can represent a lot of different actions. > Ask some programmers if they learned function calls before they learned variable assignment. I'm obviously betting they didn't, but I'd be curious if I were wrong. The answer to this question is irrelevant, but also hard to understand. Variables and functions are deeply intertwined ideas because most function calls take variables. SICP taught functions first, and it was widely acclaimed. > Macros can arbitrarily change the nature of functions just like adverbs change the meaning of nouns. I do not see an interpretation of macros that is concordant with this metaphor. Macros let you define new parts of speech entirely, hand-tooled to let you perfectly express what you want the way you find most natural. > I'd even bet cash that even a room of grad students could brainstorm/generate new nouns much faster than they can generate adverbs. This might not prove anything. I do not think this is relevant. But if you'd like to see an example of how complicated this is, look at any note from one partner to another. Mine go like this: "Dave, Please pick these items on your way home:" and then a list. Which is a function (in IO, so monadic since it has side effects)> But that is a verb THEN a list of nouns.