Re: scheme - my opinion - XEmacs-Beta

Monday, 13 July 1998

        [Um, who was it that reported the bug about spurious
move-to-bottom-of-buffers?  I just had it happen to me with
`find-function-other-frame'.  YAB to fix.]

Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi(a)gnus.org&gt; writes:

...
 SL Baur <steve(a)xemacs.org&gt; writes:
> Lars, there are 459 usages of the `when' macro in the XEmacs core, and 
> 2584 usages in external Lisp source.  `when' is *never* going away
> regardless of whether we change the extension language. 
...
 Yes, but it wouldn't be Common Lisp `when', would it?  It
takes the
 keywords :only-not-if, :otherwise-do-not and :not-when-otherwise-not.
 These are *essential*.  :-) 
:-)

...
 Now that I think about it, I think what I tried to say was this:

...
 Common Lisp defines lots of functions that are very general.  If I
 know that there is a function called `delete-if', I can guess that it
 takes a keyword :key -- all these functions do.  However, if I use a
 Scheme function `delete-if', I don't really know anything about it,
 since the standard doesn't define such a function, which again means
 that there's a local implementation, and I wouldn't know which
 parameters it takes. 
O.K.

...
 Common Lisp is huge. 
And FSF Emacs is huge.  XEmacs is huger.

...
 Scheme is tiny.  Because of this, Scheme implementations have to
 provide a gazillion home-baked function, all with their twisty little
 parameter lists.  This, in effect, means that Scheme environments in
 general are more work to learn than Common Lisp environments. 
...
 The issues that Common Lisp doesn't handle (buffers, marks,
etc.),
 Scheme doesn't handle either, so that's not really an issue, in my
 opinion. 
Good points, all.

...
 In the end, it may just come down to differences in taste, but I
think
 that CL enhances the productivity of programmers.  Scheme, to me, is
 manual *work*.  It would make an excellent extension language for vi. 
...
 *duck* 
Not from me.  I'd much rather have heated discussions and flamewars
*now* rather after a code change.  Absolutely nothing is written in
any kind of hard material.

Is anyone close to Eric?  He doesn't seem to respond much to me any
more, but his CL emacs proposal is as strong as anything we've seen so 
far.

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

1999

1998

Re: scheme - my opinion