Re: LFM + LFSP = LFE?

[Pascal Costanza <address@hidden>]

On Montag, Juni 16, 2003, at 10:05  Uhr, Robert Feldt wrote:

> On Mon, 16 Jun 2003, Robert Feldt wrote:
>
>> Agreed. Matz seems to value succinctness/conciseness very high though 
>> so
>> this might be in their name (but macros would often make things even 
>> more
>> succinct I think so why not there? ;) ).
>>
> Just found matz slides form his ll2 talk and his "bullet points" about
> syntax was:
>
> * Syntax should be stable
>     * Human brain is not good at handling multiple rules
>        * Especially not if they change from place to place
>     * Act against macros
>        * It's powerful, too powerful
>
> His view seems to be along the lines "Succinctness is good and its good
> to allow some syntactic alternatives, but syntax should be stable 
> (once you've learned
> it!) so macros is one step too far"...

Why do most language designers always think that they know better 
what's good for programmers than the programmers themselves?

The only conclusion I can draw from such statements is that our field 
is still in the dark middle ages.


Pascal