Re: macros vs. blocks

[Guy Steele - Sun Microsystems Labs <address@hidden>]

   From: kragen@pobox.com (Kragen Sitaker)
   To: ll1-discuss@ai.mit.edu
   Subject: Re: macros vs. blocks
   Date: Sun, 24 Nov 2002 02:21:32 -0500 (EST)
   
   ...
   Do macros offer *anything* other than shorter programs?

An excellent question.  In some sense, the design of programming
languages is all about making programs easier for people to
grasp and to modify; otherwise machine language written as
a big block of 0s and 1s would suffice.

Shorter is not always better (to see why, study the language HQ9+),
but other things being equal, it often makes an important
difference.  Structure is usually more important than brevity.

--Guy Steele