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Re: New Lisp ?

Andreas Bogk <andreas@andreas.org> writes:
> Jeffrey Siegal <jbs@quiotix.com> writes:
> > As for conditions, I prefer
> > passing condition handlers as explicit arguments.  With proper tail
> > calls and limited use of call/cc to escape out of CPS, it works fine.
> 
> I don't think so.  Having to pass around handlers for all sorts of
> conditions is a nuisance.  This is something CL and Dylan got right,
> IMHO.

Wel I've not written any large reactive systems using CPS for
condition-handling, but it certainly seems to work well in my
data-mining code. As things stand today, I'd probably not choose
Scheme for a large GUI application, although I'm cooking up ideas to
try out in PLT Scheme just to see if there GUI support is as good as
it looks. Maybe sometime in this millenium I'll get around to it.

> > > Oh, and dynamism vs. performance tradeoffs like sealing,

Huh? What is this feature?

> > I think these are overhyped features which have been adaquately
> > addressed in Lisp/Scheme using either different implementations as
> > needed, declarations, etc.
> 
> The point is that you can start writing code without caring about
> performance. 

Surely you *don't* really mean this. Big-O issues will jump up and get
you if you don't think about them.

> Once the design has settled, you can sprinkle some
> adjectives here and there, and the code becomes fast, without having
> to re-implement performance-critical code.  I consider sealing to be a
> good thing.

Do you not also get the same benefits if you develop using good
functional abstractions?

david rush
-- 
The beginning of wisdom for a [software engineer] is to recognize the
difference between getting a program to work, and getting it right.
	-- M A Jackson, 1975
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