Re: Var-free programming (slightly off-topic)

[Dan Sugalski <address@hidden>]

At 12:00 PM 12/5/2001 -0500, Scott McKay wrote:
>At 11:13 PM 12/4/01, Dan Weinreb wrote:
>>    From: Scott McKay <swm@hotdispatch.com>
>>      (1) It should have a small, reasonably orthogonal core that has 
>> extensibility
>>           built in from the start.
>>
>>What counts as extensibility?  Does this mean macros in the sense of
>>Lisp, Dylan, Jonathan's JSE?
>
>Extensibility includes being able to extend classes, functions, and syntax.

Why small and orthogonal, though? That would seem to be as much an 
implementation issue as anything else. (And it's not really likely in 
domain-specific languages, which I'd expect would have odd protruberances 
matching their problem domain)

>>      (3) Highly layered approach to adding functionality.
>>
>>I honestly don't know what you're getting at here.
>
>It means that it should be easy to add "libraries" that integrate well
>with the rest of the language.  It means that the core language should
>not be cluttered with things that belong in libraries.  This, as I said,
>is partly a matter of good expository writing.

The distinction between core and libraries is a blurry one. I don't think 
it ought be made as part of an evaluation of the language either--what 
would you do with a language that, for example, stuck all its socket stuff 
in a library, but automagically yanked in the library if the parser saw you 
were using functions from it?

					Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
dan@sidhe.org                         have teddy bears and even
                                      teddy bears get drunk