Re: Scheme syntax vs. other languages [was: Re: Appreciation / Financial support]

[Joseph Rushton Wakeling]

On 07/06/12 17:31, David Kastrup wrote:
> I think that a larger barrier is actually the use of features like
> modules in a non-documented and non-obvious way.

Can you explain this in greater detail?  Would be useful to understand this 
better before replying to your earlier, longer message on the Scheme vs. D code.

> There is a _lot_ of barriers involved, and quite a few that suck
> royally.  But changing language would, in my opinion, do rather little
> to address that.

I'm not trying to pressure you to change the language in the short term.  What I 
am trying to do is to get you to give some long-term consideration towards some 
of the emerging languages which might offer a way to unify the internals, 
high-level stuff and scripting language, and _at the same time_ offer useful new 
language features and a friendlier language syntax.

I'm not asking or expecting you to be convinced straight away, though. :-)

> One thing that's on my black list of uglinesses is the markup system
> together with the markup macro.  This is non-robust, and interacts with
> the module system and interpretation timing in non-trivial ways.
>
> It's one of those things that you can do in Scheme quite better (or at
> all) than in many other languages, but where resisting the temptation
> would have paid off.

Again, can you explain in a little more detail?