I've only skimmed/sampled some of On Lisp, and even less of Let Over Lambda. But the main theme of both seemed to be: Macros are an important higher level of programming, but under-appreciated, under-utilized, under-understood (stood?), and "under-booked". Hence these books.
Anaphoric macros are deliberately unhygienic. But I didn't get the impression that all or even most of the macro techniques were unhygienic. Am I wrong and didn't get deep enough into the books? To put it another way, is the negative reaction here due to him dissing hygiene, or is it reflective of a deeper and broader disagreement with the entire approach of putting macros on a pedestal? BTW I'm asking this innocently, genuinely not knowing the answer, curious what more experienced people think. On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 10:53 AM, Carl Eastlund <c...@ccs.neu.edu> wrote: > On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Hendrik Boom <hend...@topoi.pooq.com> wrote: >> On Sat, Nov 20, 2010 at 08:42:57AM -0500, Shriram Krishnamurthi wrote: >>> I haven't seen this book mentioned here before, so: >>> >>> http://letoverlambda.com/ >>> >>> It is, well, a very particular perspective on things, but I've heard >>> people speak well of it. >> >> It looks interesting. Very unSchemeish, though. Chapter 6, on >> anaphoric macros, seems to celebrate unhygienicity. >> >> -- hendrik > > The following passage is particularly unsettling. > > "Even the vast majority of Scheme systems, the platform that has > experimented the most with hygiene, provide unhygienic defmacro-style > macros—presumably because not even Scheme implementors take hygiene > very seriously. Like training wheels on a bicycle, hygiene systems are > for the most part toys that should be discarded after even a modest > level of skill has been acquired." > > --Carl > _________________________________________________ > For list-related administrative tasks: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users > _________________________________________________ For list-related administrative tasks: http://lists.racket-lang.org/listinfo/users
