Re: What's missing in ELisp that makes people want to use cl-lib?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: João Távora <joaotavora@gmail.com>
> Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2023 12:53:10 +0000
> Cc: Dmitry Gutov <dmitry@gutov.dev>,
>  Gerd Möllmann <gerd.moellmann@gmail.com>, 
>  Björn Bidar <bjorn.bidar@thaodan.de>, emacs-devel@gnu.org
> 
> > cl-lib uses itself, and needs debugging too.  Debugging code that uses
> > abstractions often requires penetrating these abstractions and checking
> > their innards.
> 
> Well, no.  I don't go read OS source code whenever I have doubts
> about how to use a system call or how to read a given piece of
> code that uses that system call, I read the manual page for the system
> call itself.

This misses the point which I think Alan wanted to make.  The point is
that when some cl-lib function seems to return an unexpected result,
one needs to debug that function.  And since Edebug has only
rudimentary and frequently completely inadequate support for debugging
cl-lib abstractions, one must then attempt at analyzing and
understanding those abstractions as part of debugging.

And if you never had such moments when some OS syscall produced an
unexpected result and the man pages failed to explain why, then I
guess you have yet a few TIL situations in your future ;-)

> Just as I don't pull up a magnifying glass to check if
> my CPU's transistors are doing what they should, I trust the data sheet
> describing the instructions.

Strawmen aside, this flies in the face of one of the great advantages
of working with Free Software: if you want and need to, you can find
out what happens on any level, including the lowest level of OS system
calls.  Trying to laugh it away is a non-starter around here.