Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Tla spork

[tomas]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 03:34:31PM +0100, Andrew Suffield wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 12:53:43PM +0900, Miles Bader wrote:
> > The question is whether the burden of learning something new is
> > outweighed by the vast potential for abstraction offered by a very
> > regular syntax
> 
> That's a myth. Transforming between natural and prefix notation is
> trivial, loses no data, [...]

Right, but then there's the power of macros...

Guess why it's so difficult to have powerful macro systems for
non-lisp languages.

I'd adventure to say that it's easier to understand what happens
to program structure if you already `see' it in the regular way
of S-expressions. Not that you couldn't represent Perl or Python
programs as syntax trees -- but the mental gap from the program
as you see it to the AST is wider --> no useful macro preprocessors.

Meta-programming made difficult.

(Geez. I always try to keep shut, but don't manage. Sorry for that ;)

Regards
-- tomás