Rustom Mody <rustompm...@gmail.com>:
> Some rambly ruminations on switchable (aka firstclass) syntax
> http://blog.languager.org/2015/04/poverty-universality-structure-0.html
I'll ruminate in response:
* The awesomeness of lisp is in lambda calculus and not in macros.
* Lisp syntax is actually not quite first-class:
Guile:
scheme@(guile-user)> let
While compiling expression:
ERROR: Syntax error:
unknown location: let: bad let in form let
Elisp:
if
Debugger entered--Lisp error: (void-variable if)
eval(if nil)
eval-last-sexp-1(t)
eval-last-sexp(t)
eval-print-last-sexp()
call-interactively(eval-print-last-sexp nil nil)
* Syntax is first-class in Kernel <URL:
http://web.cs.wpi.edu/~jshutt/kernel.html>. Too bad Kernel chose a
naming scheme (NPI) that makes it incompatible with scheme.
* Beginning schemers are infatuated with defining new syntax (macros).
What results is unreadable code.
* The age-old lisp idea of application-specific languages is perfectly
all right, though.
And most to the point:
* Even with its syntax machinery, the lisp parser will reject Python
and C source code.
Marko
--
https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
