On Sat, Jun 29, 2013 at 1:35 PM, Louis-Guillaume Gagnon < louis.guillaume.gag...@gmail.com> wrote:
> 2013/6/29 Andrew Gwozdziewycz <w...@apgwoz.com>: > > I don't speak for the suckless community, but despite the fact that I > love > > it, Lisp is complicated and not very simple at all > > It's worth noting that the R5RS scheme standard is only ~50 pages > long: http://www.schemers.org/Documents/Standards/R5RS/ > In comparison, the C99 standard is ~550 pages. I would say that the > scheme dialect is pretty simple. > > 50 pages of spec does not a simple dialect make. Sure, it defines a tiny core, but it demands fully hygienic macros (recommending `syntax-rules`) and continuations. `syntax-rules` macros don't allow you to capture bindings at all, which is impractical enough that R6RS (and many implementations) adopted `syntax-case` (and subsequently implemented `syntax-rules` in terms of it), which is just painful and complex to use. `syntax-rules` macros, while declarative and arguably more maintainable, is actually it's own language, and breaks you out of the "Scheme" flow. Don't even get me started on the "simplicity" of continuations. There's a trove of literature on them which refutes that. -- http://apgwoz.com
