Re: [Chicken-hackers] plain lambdas as syntax transformers

[Felix]

Peter, Joerg:

>>However, it's confusing to newbies, you can't really explain what
>>exactly er-transformer *does*.  Also, the extra typing isn't that bad
>>and I'm not sure we should be subtly encouraging the use of ER
>>transformers over IR transformers by making them less work to type
>>(IR transformers are safer unless you know exactly what you're doing).

>While I'm currently struggling and failing (at seen on chicken-users)
>to replace something easily done in the unhygienic way with some
>portable
>and hygienic code... I'd like to second Peters argument here.

>One more identifier and indent level is not that bad.  (It could even
>be avoided simply by a macro instead of the lambda keyword.)

> But the subtle damage it does to the newbies brain when reading
> existing code to learn… that's bad.

Sorry - but that's just bullshit. We are talking about a simple
default here: if no explicit transformer-constructor is used, then
default to explicit-renaming. What's so confusing about this?

Explicit renaming is a simple model, it is older and IMHO easier to
understand. Scheme48 and syntax-case both use plain lambdas instead of
transformer-procedures and I haven't heard anybody complaining about
them being the cause of brain-damage to newbies.


cheers,
felix