Re: type systems as libraries

On Fri, 30 Dec 2005, David Trudgett wrote:

> "RPG" <rpgoldman@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
>
> > Drew McDermott has done this as part of his suite of Yale tools for
> > lisp. Have a look at the software documentation and software tools on
> > his page at http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/dvm/
>
> Checking out a few of the pages there, I came across this one about
> CL's FORMAT:
>
> http://cs-www.cs.yale.edu/homes/dvm/format-stinks.html
>
> I think he has a good point there, and it seems to me that FORMAT is
> extremely unlispy, even more so than loop (if such a comparison is
> possible). On the other hand, I don't notice FORMAT's unlispiness
> threatening to transform my Lisp programs into C evilness... so maybe
> it's acceptable.
>
> What are people's thoughts on this? Does anyone actually go out of
> their way to avoid FORMAT?

I'm pretty novice at lisp still, but format is one of those
things I have to look up basically every time I use it. It
is pretty unintuitive, at least at first.
.

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