On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 11:07 AM, Brian Harvey <[email protected]> wrote: > But there has been a /huge/ cost. This case-sensitivity discussion is > just one of many in which useful features of what I still think of as > the actual Scheme language (before the macro overlay) founder on weird > incompatibilities with macros. (The REPL!!!! Give me a break.)
I don't see what the case-sensitivity issue has to do with macros, but given the length of the discussion, I don't really want to know. > Unlike some other things, this is /not/ the fault of R6RS, although R6 > has moved further down the road built in R5. So it's at least somewhat > independent of the recent contentious issues. > > We now have the macro tail wagging the Scheme dog. What does Scheme do well? What does Scheme (not just RnRS Scheme, but Scheme more broadly) have that no one else has? It isn't lexical scope - everyone but elisp has that, these days. It isn't real first-class functions - lots of languages have that too. It isn't proper tail calls - ML does that right. It's not advanced compilers for functional languages - those are a dime a dozen. It's not even first-class control, which a few other languages have. And the REPL - even Python has that. It's macros. Since 1986, Scheme has had a macro system that other languages can't compete with, and haven't succeeded in matching in the last 23 years. And over those 23 years, Scheme hasn't stood still - Schemers have developed a vastly more expressive system in which huge numbers of new and powerful language extensions are possible. So I say, press our advantage. Improve the macro system. Show the programming language world what the real power of "a very small number of rules for forming expressions" is. That's not to say that we should neglect the other things that make Scheme a high-quality programming language. They are important, and Scheme needs a community that cares about all her aspects. But this is not the tail wagging the dog - it's knowing where our strengths lie. -- sam th [email protected] _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
