On 11 Sep 2009, at 5:21 pm, David Van Horn wrote: > OK, so a general purpose language with higher-order first-class > procedures, generic arithmetic, first-class continuations, etc. is > "low-level", whereas a domain specific first-order term rewriting > system in which anything useful must be written in CPS (a kind of > register machine model) is "high-level". Perfect.
You hit the nail right on the head ;-) In practical terms, high-level macros are expressive enough for many common tasks, and make them easier to see what's going on, at the cost of having to learn a new domain-specific language. It's the age-old tradeoff of having a specialised implementation for the common case: it's better tailored to the common case, but it's limited, and it's another thing to learn. > > David > ABS -- Alaric Snell-Pym Work: http://www.snell-systems.co.uk/ Play: http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/ Blog: http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/archives/author/alaric/ _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
