······@gerber.ai.mit.edu (Aubrey Jaffer) writes:
>The radical suggestion I made was prompted by the realization that
>Scheme's 16 special forms seem to cover almost all the ways I write
>code (control structure). No one seems to share that observation with
>me.
But one of the beauties of Lisp is the ability able to embed your own
language in it. Do you object to defining DEF-type macros, e.g.
(DEFPREDICATE AUTOMOBILE
(ISA MOBILE-OBJECT MACHINE)
(HAS-PARTS DOOR TIRE ENGINE))
What if I define a new data structure, and then want to write new
control constructs for it, e.g. streams:
(DO-STREAM (ELEMENT MY-STREAM)
(PRINT ELEMENT))
Are you seriously suggesting that doing these with "primitives" is
more readable, or indeed better in any way at all?
--
John Burger ····@mitre.org
"You ever think about .signature files? I mean, do we really need them?"
- alt.andy.rooney