REPL versus compilation in Lisp have for many decades been two different things.
In the REPL, you were allowed to refer to symbols that were undefined in the current lexical scope, hoping that at runtime they would eventually exists some where on the stack. To compile such code you needed to add declarations for this stuff not in the lexical scope of the compiler to tell it that it would be defined later else where. Either later in the same file or in a different one, this did not matter. Otherwise the compiler would simply fail. Compilation was an odd thing in Lisp initially and it was sufficiently different from the REPL to require twists in your code when you wanted to compile it. It was seen as a second step, after dev had been done in the REPL. The REPL is there to swallow forms which are unrelated. The kind of compilation you would like to see requires something more (the "file approach ?"). If we fall too much on the "compilation/optimization" side, then this relative independence of forms will eventually break and create it's own set of problems at the REPL. Yes Lisps were designed mainly for REPL interaction, compiling came afterward. I was a witness of this era mainly because I am a dinosaur :) Clojure's approach is somewhere closer to the compilation side in view of the requirements of it's supporting container but I do not think that it can get much closer without breaking some of that dynamic REPL stuff that speeds up development and that we like. Luc P. > Tim Visher <tim.vis...@gmail.com> writes: > > > On Mon, Aug 19, 2013 at 11:09 PM, Armando Blancas <abm221...@gmail.com> > > wrote: > >>> I'll point out as well that though I thought Yegge's criticisms of > >>> Clojure were a bit polemical (I guess that's his style), the single > >>> pass compiler issue was one of his biggest gripes, and I do think it > >>> still rings true. I feel like I have to babysit clojure in this > >>> regard, when I usually feel like clojure is babysitting me! :) > >> > >> Have you seen this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2467359 > > > > That's what I was referring to. Was there something specific about it > > that you wanted to call out? :) > > > Actually, that's quite interesting, and I hadn't seen it before. > > I can understand the reasons why forward declaration makes the > implementation of clojure easy, but it does seem to be pushing the > burden onto the programmer, rather than the language designer. I'm > particularly not convinced by the argument that "Lisps were designed to > receive a set of interactions/forms via a REPL"; forward declaration > introduces another circumstance where the state of your REPL can get in > a twist: your source might look like this... > > (def y) > (defn x[] y) > > then get changed to > > (defn x[] y) > (def y) > > and working quite happily *until* you restart the REPL. Re-starting just > in case is a problem with most REPLs, and this doesn't help. On the > whole, I think I prefer compile warnings, rather than everything > breaking. > > I seem to have stirred up a bit of a nest. > > Phil > > -- > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "Clojure" group. > To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com > Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your > first post. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Clojure" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > -- Softaddicts<lprefonta...@softaddicts.ca> sent by ibisMail from my ipad! -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
