On Thu, 30 Apr 2020 11:16:10 -0400, Hendrik Boom <hend...@topoi.pooq.com> wrote:
>I stongly recommend that we get a language with less of a >parenthesis problem so that code is readable without having to haul >it into a specialised editor. > >It is possible to do this without creating a hugely complicated and >unintuitive syntax for the language! We don't need to savage >the language to accomplish this! ML and Haskell both look very similar to what you seem to want. So does Python for that matter. But it isn't possible to write integrated, reflexive macros in any of those languages. They DO allow macros (of a sort), but their macros have to be written using a different, more restrictive language ... ie. you don't write an ML macro in ML, you write it in the subset language M(acro)ML. Consequently, macros are not used heavily in any of those languages. And use of DSLs with those languages are rare. If you look at the history of Lisp, you'll see that originally it was intended to have a more conventional syntax: the S-expr parenthesis laden syntax we still use was intended as a stopgap until the conventional "M-expr" syntax could be implemented. But macros proved to be very difficult to adapt to the M-expr syntax, and macros were so important to Lisp that they caused McCarthy to abandon the idea of M-exprs. George -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Racket Users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/racket-users/hvrlafdq67djfk04p10i7teekn0m2pa4kb%404ax.com.
