On Mon, Mar 29, 2010 at 6:33 PM, Matthias Felleisen <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Mar 29, 2010, at 7:18 PM, Jay McCarthy wrote: > >> I believe that you've thought about this more than me. > > I am not sure but I sure had a head-start on you. Plus it is my distinct > impression that everyone who starts with Lisp-y languages goes through most > of the learning process that the "Lisp community" has gone through. (It's > kind of like in biology.) For the purpose of 'syntax discussions', I do count > us all as Lispers.
"ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" :) > > So here we go. Syntax should be as dynamic as possible for the implementor of > language extensions and as static as possible for users. That's especially > true for the majority of programmers who write no macros or only simplistic > macros. > > What does this mean? When the average programmer uses the language and its > syntactic libraries, there should be no distinction. When something goes > wrong with the syntax, report it in terms of the 'what' of the syntax not in > terms of how the macro failed. Just imagine you'd get syntax error message > from your Java compiler in terms of the parsing technology used, not in terms > of the grammar parsed. You'd never ever touch the language again. I think > this applies to our syntax world too. That's what I mean with 'static'. Then > again, I have recanted on my belief that 'static syntax' means no dynamics > for the syntax implementor. I now do use three levels of files to implement > my syntactic extension (mostly world) so that I do get single point of > control and usable syntax for beginning students. > > (In the end it may all boil down to my POPL lecture: Errors Matter.) > >> Maybe I'm not arguing with Matthias. Maybe I am arguing with Jon. Jon >> should not have said, "This macro application gives a bad error >> message. Syntax-case: Grr!" He should have said, "This macro >> application gives a bad error message. Macro: Grrr!" > > That's quite possible. -- Jay McCarthy <[email protected]> Assistant Professor / Brigham Young University http://teammccarthy.org/jay "The glory of God is Intelligence" - D&C 93 _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-dev
