[pro] The Best Examples of "Code is Data"

[Daniel Weinreb]

I see.

Well, I'll still go so far as to say that he did write
a book's worth of stuff, the writing style is quite
nice, and he has unique ideas.  So despite the
fact that I'm not going to use his techniques,
I am nevertheless very impressed.

-- Dan

Julian Squires wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 6:19 PM, Daniel Weinreb <dlw at itasoftware.com> wrote:
> [re: Let Over Lamba]
>   
>> This is an interesting and original book.  The techniques
>> he likes, including "anamorphic macros", have generally
>> been frowned upon by the community.
>>     
>
> I don't understand why anaphoric macros are so frowned upon.  Like any
> powerful tool, it's easy to construct pathological situations where
> they make code more difficult to understand.  However, I feel that
> when tastefully used, they enhance the expressiveness of the language,
> readibility of code, and they can help to reduce the verbosity of CL
> of which many outsiders complain.  Of course, the prior two sentences
> apply just as well to macros in general as they do to anaphora.
>
> (I remember an interesting paper by Todd Proebsting advocating
> anaphoric features for languages, which is evidence that it's not just
> those out-of-control Lispers who lust after these features: we just
> get what others dream.)
>
> Cheers,
>
>   
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mailman.common-lisp.net/pipermail/pro/attachments/20100909/dbf3778b/attachment.html>