Re: How do you imagine future Common Lisp standard ?

rem642b@xxxxxxxxx (Robert Maas, see http://tinyurl.com/uh3t) writes:

> > From: "Tron3k" <tron3k@xxxxxxxxx>
> > - Predicates changed to end in '?' and destructive functions changed
> > to end in '!', just like Scheme

One subtle reason that ? and ! aren't used in CL is to keep them from
being used up as potential macro characters. The more characters that
everyone has to use all the time, the fewer available for interesting
specialized applications. Scheme doesn't focus on good macro
character support as a basic need of programmers, so ends up making
different decisions. Once again evidence of my oft-made point that
Goodness and Badness must be evaluated in a particular design-space
context, not in isolation.

Also, I personally find the notion of "!" on words the same level of
out-of-control screaming as many others seem to feel about
all-uppercase. People who DON'T use these operators are the ones that
seem to want them marked; the people who do use them often feel they
aren't as dangerous as the people who do. Personally, I find excess
consing a lot more "dangerous" in practice than re-linking a data
structure as part of a thoughtful algorithm.

> - A standardized foreign function interface

I agree this is powerful/useful, and that compatibility would be a
win. It's fortunate that this can be done without change to the standard,
and hence doesn't have to be part of a future _CL_ standard--it can be
added as a layered standard.

> - A function for splitting sequences

The set of useful library functions is unending.

When we designed CL, we referred to the design as the "white pages"
and intended this stuff to appear in the "yellow pages" (by analogy
with phone books, where the "commerce" in useful stuff was to be done
outside of it).

In fact, splitting sequences is enough important that having multiple
ways to do it subject to different constraints is probably also good,
which makes it possibly not such a good candidate for a standard.
(But then, I argued against having a standardized EQUAL function, too,
for similar reasons.)

> - Eventually make it a Lisp-1

There's no point in making Common Lisp a Lisp-1, since that would be such
a big change as to completely change the language, and hence the user base.
Once you've done that, you might as well have just designed something new.
There's no reason to define the old language away, since you can already
do that by consing a new language with such cool new stuff that people leave
voluntarily.

Everyone who's interested in this issue--or even is just studying the
US Supreme Court battle now ongoing--should become familiar with the term
"stare decisis" and its underlying rationale. Here's a pretty good simple
explanation as a starting point, which does a good job of summarizing the
rationale:
http://www.lectlaw.com/def2/s065.htm
Wiki ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stare_decisis ) has more detail, but
makes it harder to find the "take home messages".

As for making forward progress on the lisp1/lisp2 debate,
I'm just a bit sad that Tron3K isn't studying my Half-Baked stuff,
which advocates a Lisp-Omega approach that I believe ought to be both
mathematically elegant and potentially encompassing of both dialects.
My stabs at it were limited in scope and may or may not be comprehensible,
but I am available to answer questions about the concepts.
Whether following my work directly or just doing something else in the same
space, it would at least be "new work" of an interesting kind. Trying to
use "power plays" to perturb a community from one core idea to another
isn't really a good idea.
.

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