RE: [Axiom-developer] Terms of Surrender (was: BAD tim)

[Bill Page]

On November 6, 2005 11:10 AM Tim Daly wrote

> ...
> boot is NOT a higher level language than lisp. Spad is.

I think boot is a higher level language than lisp.

In my previous email I intended to quote Jergen Weiss'
example of the use of destructing in Boot:

> 4. Destructuring setq and destructuring comparisons

> One of the highlights in BOOT is the possibility
> to use destructuring setqs and destructuring comparisons.
> This is extremly handy. Some random examples:
>
>   for [[.,arg], :.] in singles while null tuple repeat
>     if arg is ['Tuple,.] then tuple := arg
>
>   a is [=op,b,t1] =>
>
> Without this feature the code will get almost unintelligible.
> And this feature is used in almost every line of code.

Of course Ansi lisp does support such operations at a fairly
high level. That is what motivated me to include the adoption
of Ansi lisp in Axiom as the first of my "terms".

Regards,
Bill Page.