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"So next time when you criticize macros" I wasn't criticizing macros; I claimed that they don't give you much guidance to any particular convention because you
by jeffdavis 13y ago
"So next time when you criticize macros"
I wasn't criticizing macros; I claimed that they don't give you much guidance to any particular convention because you can do anything.
A language without conventions is incomplete, so you need to do something active to bring the conventions about. In other words, the designers of lisp leave conventions as an exercise for the reader and really offer no guidance from the language itself.
Clojure and racket are trying to address that, which is good. I've played around with them a bit, generally found them pleasant, and I hope they succeed (though I did not find anything that would compel me to actually use them for the kinds of things I work on).
It's interesting that you bring up C++. I wonder what your feelings are about people who prefer C over C++?
- wirrbel 13y agoRegarding C and C++, I am slightly leaning towards C. While C++ offers some abstractions over C that are really nice to have, it often feels like an awkward chimera. I see C as a even-higher-level assembly language. c++ was a logical step but is kind of obsolete for non-realtime systems Guidance in a language is a hard thing to do right. I think the only reasonable way of guidance is to make good coding practice simple, limiting guidance is often quite bad [1], because while in a lot of cases it makes things easier, there are those cases where you then have to work around the limitations and this is when you get those "bug ridden incomplete implementations" of that "liberal" language. Which good guidances from which programming languages are you fond of? [1] now that I think about it, I do like immutability in functional programming languages - a not-so-liberal thing..