[Prev][Next][Index][Thread]

Re: Does my ideal language exist?

Bruce Hoult <bruce@hoult.org> writes:

> So, to you, Scheme is no longer a Lisp?  (or never was?)  Fair enough, 

Not really. It's an algol-like language with prefix syntax.

> The problem is that the "completely unreadable mess of more than a page" 
> provided a *lot* more functionality than your little macro above.
> 

I couldn't work out all the details of what it was doing.

> 
> > CLOS has historically been implemented as a macro system without any
> > support from the underlying Lisp. Could I build something like that
> > with Dylan macros?
> 
> I honestly don't know, as I haven't seen the ones implementing CLOS.
> 

I think you would miss SYMBOL-MACROLET to implement with-slots. You
need to cause a given symbol to expand to something in any context.

> Well, you can say that but it plainly isn't true.  I mean, look at the 
> code you posted, with the () removed:
> 
>    with-collect c1 c2 dotimes i 10 if oddp i c1 i c2 i
> 
> What does the indentation tell us here?  Not a lot :-)  Is it possible 
> to parse it?  Yes, as Logo and FORTH have proved.  But it's not very 
> pleasant.
> 

That came out of the doc-string where it was folded for brevity. In
normal cod e it would have been indented in the standard way.

> But, really, isn't this once again a pretty trivial level to base a like 
> or dislike for a language upon?  If you couldn't do your with-collect 
> macro in a reasonable way then that would certainly be something to 
> complain about, but minor naming conventions???

It will boil down to matters of taste probably. I would prefer Dylan
above C, C++ or Perl any day.

-- 
Lieven Marchand <mal@bewoner.dma.be>
When C++ is your hammer, everything looks like a thumb.      Steven M. Haflich
References: