From: Courageous <jkras...@san.rr.com>
Subject: Re: Are macros really a neccessity, or a coverup of language      deficiencies?
Date: 2000/04/28
Message-ID: <39093CCD.E1EB657D@san.rr.com>#1/1
X-Deja-AN: 616674352
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
References: <390371F0.36455F4E@makif.omer.k12.il> <3165647335532305@naggum.no> <3907660B.CCA3ECD2@yahoo.com> <1e9pulo.1ueryh2128131kN%bparsia@email.unc.edu> <3907FD4A.D138F88D@yahoo.com> <ymihfcntpjo.fsf@sevak.isi.edu> <3908D64D.C42DCE6E@yahoo.com> <3165894081922447@naggum.no>
X-Accept-Language: en
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
X-Complaints-To: abuse@rr.com
X-Trace: typhoon1.san.rr.com 956906549 24.30.154.127 (Fri, 28 Apr 2000 00:22:29 PDT)
Organization: Time Warner Cable of San Diego, CA
MIME-Version: 1.0
NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 28 Apr 2000 00:22:29 PDT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp

Erik Naggum wrote:
> 
> * Peaker <GNUPea...@yahoo.com>
> | I find it a lot more readable, too, don't you?
> 
>   sorry, no.  I find the object model extremely constraining, just
>   like infix syntax is simple and compact for severely constrained
>   contexts and circumstances. 

Personally, I don't find that infix notation has much
merit, except for the fact that "that's what everyone is
used to". Really, I'd rather write (+ 3 4 5 6) than
(3 + 4 + 5 + 6) any day, and come now: is (+ 3 4) any more
syntactically unwieldly than (3 + 4)? Not that I can tell.

I suppose, perhaps, you're referring to all the very simple
expressions in other languages where the parentheses aren't
necessary? But then you and I both know that lisp programmers
stop seeing parens after a while...

I'm reminded of a study which showed that command line
environments were harder to learn but had higher payoff
in productivity in the end. I wouldn't really characterize
Lisp as being hard to learn at all, but I would still
characterize it somewhat like that: any initial investement
time is certainly paid off for by productivity in the end.


C/