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Re: Whats wrong with this defcustom?


From: Emanuel Berg
Subject: Re: Whats wrong with this defcustom?
Date: Wed, 30 Jul 2014 04:18:29 +0200
User-agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.3 (gnu/linux)

Robert Thorpe <rt@robertthorpeconsulting.com> writes:

> What you quote above is mostly what Thien-Thi Nguyen
> wrote.

Well, yeah, he wrote it, but you quoted it, and the
last line of the quote, you wrote.

> He used (some char) means "equivalent to" or
> "identical to".

Yes, I understood him.

> The lisp reader translates '(foo bar) into (quote
> (foo bar)) which is evaluated. The quote special form
> doesn't evaluate it's argument. So, evaluating it
> produces "(foo bar)". I wrote "returned" because
> quote is rather like a function that's called and
> returns something.

Yeah, in languages such as C you have a function and a
type for the return value and then an explicit return
keyword to denote when it happens, and what is
returned. In Elisp you have types but not typed
functions and everything evaluates to something (but
can have side-effects just the same). I don't know if
there are some subtle differences between returning and
evaluating, except for that evaluating seems more
flexible as it can be done in several ways (for
example, prog1 and progn) but perhaps it can also be
more confusing as it isn't typed or explicit (not as
clear as in C anyway), and also because while
everything evaluates to something, it is far from
always that result is what matters. Tho I prefer Lisp
because of its power and the dynamics to it (evaluating
parts while working with the code, etc.) I actually
think C is easier to read (when I write C and Elisp, I
mean). What I like with Lisp is that you can do almost
everything with it. It is like Bruce Lee. Paradigm
free, the style of no style. Technique doesn't matter
(that much), but delivery (execution) does. It is like
a boxer throwing 200 jabs in a fight. Only 25 lands -
those were all jabs, i.e., identical techniques. What
made some land and some not was factors external to the
techniques themselves. So that is why I don't like
paradigmic discussions any more than outright language
wars, because I don't see that as being the thing that
matters.

> Equality is something else, as you've found.

I have? What I meant, if something evaluates to
something, and something else evaluates to something -
are they the same? - these somethings (before
evaluating) should be put into Lisp functions so we can
see for ourselves. Only then, question is, what
function should be used?

-- 
underground experts united


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