Kieren MacMillan <kie...@kierenmacmillan.info> writes: > Hi Han-Wen, > >> Over the years, I've become extremely wary of syntactic sugar: it adds >> an extra barrier to usage/development because everyone not only has to >> learn Scheme, they also have to learn the (lilypond specific) idioms >> involved. > > I'm curious you say that, since my experience is precisely the > opposite: I've had far better results "selling" Lilypond to people > using syntactic sugar than basically anything else I can identify. The > people I’ve "converted" all want to be able to type things like > > \reverseMusic \foo > > rather than learning how to write the equivalent function in > Scheme. In other words, syntactic sugar keeps them from learning > Scheme as opposed to having to learn it. > > Am I missing something? Is my experience unique?
You are talking about different things. Syntactic sugar says the same thing but in a more cohesive manner. That is not the same as assembling dedicated functionality from suitable components. Syntactic sugar saves clutter which is not the same as hiding internals. -- David Kastrup
