Re: how expressive are they?

[Scott McKay <address@hidden>]

At 2:14 PM -0800 11/23/02, Trevor Blackwell wrote:
>  > >    x and: [y] and: [z]
>>  >    x ifTrue: [y] ifFalse: [z]
>>  >
>  > > And see how much wordier these are than (AND x y z) and (IF x y z).
>
>
>What I'd like to see is an example of a program, in a language with easy
>syntax for assignment and blocks, where rewriting it without any
>user-defined macros would be similarly painful. Several people so far
>have asserted that macros are essential, but we've only seen weak
>examples where they save you some ' and [] characters, and arguably at
>the expense of some clarity.
>

You keep ignoring my 'define-xxx' macros.  Is this because
they are inconvenient data points that get in the way of the
conclusion you are trying to draw, or are they poor examples?