Re: [wmii] Inferno/Styx - why wmii is in C and is part of the Anti-Matrix

On May 17, 2006, at 5:10 AM, Anselm R. Garbe wrote:

> On Wed, May 17, 2006 at 10:19:35AM +0200, Uriel wrote:
>> I have no time to read your rant, but if you can't appreciate the
>> beauty of LISP (and specially scheme), I feel very sorry for you.
>> Scheme and C are probably the two most perfect programming languages
>> ever created, even if their perfections are opposed to each other.
>
> I agree that the linguistic objections with Scheme-alike langs
> can't be dismissed at all, they are one of the reasons that such
> langs weren't very successful for the general purpose.

This makes little sense. In a language like C, where you write things
like *strd++ = *strs++ all day long, it seems silly to say that the
"linguistic objections" in Scheme are the problem. The parenthesis in
Scheme are highly useful. Without them, we'd not be able to assemble
macros as we do. We can use them to quickly move around in our
editors. Precedence rules are eliminated. If you look at a Scheme-
alike language such as Dylan that attempted to "fix" the syntax,
you'll see that writing macros became a huge pain in the ass. And for
the record, Dylan never caught on either.

- John
Received on Thu May 18 2006 - 01:23:47 UTC