Re: Lions & tigers & variables - Oh my! [was: Lisp error on function :documentation]

[Emanuel Berg]

Drew Adams wrote:

>> global variables can be virtually eliminated by using
>> closures
>
> _*ALL*_ variables can (really, not virtually) be eliminated,
> with combinatory logic. Magic.

But not in practise writing code ...

> That doesn't mean you'll likely find it preferable to do all
> your programming without variables. It does mean that
> variables aren't at all necessary.

Right.

> Yes, all of that is OT.  What's not OT is that for
> Emacs users, _in particular_, special (global) vars
> can be quite useful.

All global variables are dynamic/special but not all
dynamic/special variables are global ...

> https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-paper.html#SEC15

Good paper ...

  Lisp is Loose!

  The traditional attitude towards Lisp holds that it is
  useful only for esoteric amusements and Artificial
  Intelligence. The appearance of Multics EMACS as a Honeywell
  product is the death knell of this view. Now, a mainframe
  manufacturer is offering a system utility program written in
  Lisp; a program intended for heavy use by the general user
  community. The special properties of Lisp, which make
  extensibility possible, are a key feature, even though many
  of the users will not be programmers. Lisp has escaped from
  the ivory tower forever, and is a force to be reckoned with
  as a system programming language.

I don't know, maybe the ivory tower has just changed form :)

-- 
underground experts united
https://dataswamp.org/~incal