Re: Looking for volunteers for XL

From	Christophe de Dinechin <christophe@taodyne.com>
Newsgroups	comp.compilers
Subject	Re: Looking for volunteers for XL
Date	2011-11-27 12:34 -0800
Organization	Compilers Central
Message-ID	<11-11-058@comp.compilers> (permalink)
References	<11-11-048@comp.compilers> <11-11-053@comp.compilers> <11-11-054@comp.compilers>

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On Nov 27, 12:19 am, "BartC" <b...@freeuk.com> wrote:
> Extensible languages have to be used with some care I think. Those
> features aren't for everyday use.

Apply your reasoning to libraries, and you'll see its limits. "It's
not necessary to make available to the Unix programmer all those
untidy function-building features". I heard that exact reasoning from
Basic gurus hearing about Pascal: "User-defined procedures? That can't
be for everyday use. Who would need to add their own keywords? Leave
that to Basic designers."

In reality, the majority of notations, vocabulary, idioms are private,
even in real life. The point of a programming language is to provide
easy to use notations for your ideas. You can only benefit from the
notations suiting the ideas better. The objections that making a
language extensible necessarily makes it unreadable or fragile flies
in the face of our experience with other forms of abstractions, and
even of the limited experience we have with those few languages that
are actually extensible, such as most Lisp derivatives.

[Well, you know, given a choice between my personal experience that
languages with extensible syntax led to unreadable programs, and
hand-waving that this time is somehow different or I didn't see what I
saw, I know what I'd choose.  You're welcome to build any language you
want, but you have a rather steep hill to climb to persuade people
that your language doesn't have all the same problems that previous
failures had. -John]

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Looking for volunteers for XL Christophe de Dinechin <christophe@taodyne.com> - 2011-11-22 21:03 -0800
  Re: Looking for volunteers for XL Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-11-26 05:43 +0000
  Re: Looking for volunteers for XL Christophe de Dinechin <christophe@taodyne.com> - 2011-11-26 12:38 -0800
    Re: Looking for volunteers for XL "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2011-11-26 23:19 +0000
      Re: Looking for volunteers for XL Christophe de Dinechin <christophe@taodyne.com> - 2011-11-27 12:34 -0800
        Re: Looking for volunteers for XL "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2011-11-27 22:24 +0000
          Re: Looking for volunteers for XL Christophe de Dinechin <christophe@taodyne.com> - 2011-11-28 14:12 -0800
            Re: Looking for volunteers for XL ardjussi <jussi.santti@ard.fi> - 2011-11-30 13:16 -0800
              Re: Looking for volunteers for XL Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-12-01 05:44 +0000
                Re: overloading, was Looking for volunteers for XL glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2011-12-02 05:36 +0000
          Re: Looking for volunteers for XL tm <thomas.mertes@gmx.at> - 2012-01-03 09:28 -0800
      Re: Looking for volunteers for XL Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-11-28 04:45 +0000
        Re: Looking for volunteers for XL Timothy Knox <tdk@thelbane.com> - 2011-11-27 22:50 -0800
          Re: Looking for volunteers for XL Alex McDonald <blog@rivadpm.com> - 2011-12-01 12:11 -0800
        Re: Looking for volunteers for XL "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2011-11-28 10:23 +0000
          Re: Looking for volunteers for XL glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2011-11-29 07:37 +0000
            Re: macros, Looking for volunteers for XL Gene Wirchenko <genew@ocis.net> - 2011-12-03 17:36 -0800
              Re: macros, Looking for volunteers for XL glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2011-12-05 04:24 +0000
          Re: Looking for volunteers for XL Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-12-01 05:35 +0000
            Re: designing language extensions, was Looking for volunteers for XL Marco van de Voort <marcov@toad.stack.nl> - 2011-12-03 13:02 +0000
            Re: Looking for volunteers for XL jgk@panix.com (Joe keane) - 2011-12-13 00:08 +0000
              Re: macros, was Looking for volunteers for XL Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-12-13 01:39 +0000
                Re: macros, was Looking for volunteers for XL Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-12-14 19:00 +0000
                Re: macros, was Looking for volunteers for XL jgk@panix.com (Joe keane) - 2011-12-15 15:40 +0000
                Re: macros, was Looking for volunteers for XL Kaz Kylheku <kaz@kylheku.com> - 2011-12-16 17:48 +0000
        Re: Looking for volunteers for XL glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2011-11-28 10:26 +0000

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