[r6rs-discuss] Interpreters need not apply?

From: John Cowan <cowan>
Date: Tue Mar 6 13:47:26 2007

Aubrey Jaffer scripsit:

> Although the motivation for Scheme macros may have been to reduce the
> number of primitive forms, its effect has been the proliferation of
> mutually incomprehensible language dialects, as though R5RS was not
> sufficient in itself for all varieties of programming.

The "Subtract one from data location N and if it becomes zero jump
to program location J" machine is also sufficient in itself for all
varieties of programming.

> Using the same mechanism for Report mandated syntactic forms and user
> macros means that macro-expanding an expression is likely to return a
> bloated, unrecognizable mess. In contrast, macroexpand in CommonLisp
> is useful because it leaves special forms alone, expanding only the
> macros.

Technically yes, but most of the non-procedures defined in Common Lisp
are already macros.

-- 
Principles.  You can't say A is         John Cowan <cowan_at_ccil.org>
made of B or vice versa.  All mass      http://www.ccil.org/~cowan
is interaction.  --Richard Feynman
Received on Tue Mar 06 2007 - 13:47:19 UTC

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