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

[Peter Bex]

On Mon, May 13, 2013 at 12:09:09PM +0200, Felix wrote:
> Peter, Joerg:
> > 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?

It makes it harder to explain what exactly er-macro-transformer does
(ie, nothing?).

> Explicit renaming is a simple model, it is older and IMHO easier to
> understand.

It's simple, but easy to do things wrong.  In that sense it's too
low-level.

> 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.

It's typical of the thinking that produced syntax-case to pre-empt the
whole system as if nothing else could co-exist with it.  In fact, unless
I'm misunderstanding, we can't support syntax-case as-is with our
system, exactly because of this!  I don't think this should be used as
a good example.

That Scheme48 does it is probably due to it being so old.

Cheers,
Peter
-- 
http://www.more-magic.net