Re: Unlearning Pattern Matching

On 29 Jun, 15:02, Dan Bensen <randomg...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Wow, pattern matching is EASY in Lisp! It's like you can write
your own language. It's almost hard to believe a language can be
as powerful and flexible as Lisp. This ML-style pattern matcher
takes just a few hours to write, even less for a real Lisp guru.
The implementation is only a couple dozen lines of code, and it
does the basics of pattern matching that has to be built-in in
other languages. Lisp is a truly remarkable language.


Obviously you haven't read Dijkstra's PATTERN MATCHING considered
harmful.

From the highlights:

The Occasion of which Insufferable Disaster, after a furious Enquiry,
and Discussion of the Point by the Learned of the Faculty, we can
Attribute to nothing more than the Excessive use of that Newfangled,
Abominable, Heathenish coding style called PATTERN MATCHING, which
Riffling Nature of her Choicest Treasures, and Drying up the Radical
Moisture, has so Eunucht our Husbands, and Cripple our more kind
Gallants, that they are become as Impotent as Age, and as unfruitful
as those Desarts whence that unhappy Berry is said to be brought.

For the continual flipping of this pitiful notation is enough to
bewitch Men of two and twenty, and tie up the Codpiece-points without
a Charm. It renders them that us it as Lean as Famine, as Rivvel'd as
Envy, or an old meager Hagg over-ridden by an Incubus. They come from
it with nothing moist but their snotty Noses, nothing stiffe but their
Joints, nor standing but their Ears: They pretend 'twill keep them
Waking, but we find by scurvy Experience, they sleep quietly enough
after it. A Betrothed Queen might trust her self a bed with one of
them, without the nice Caution of a sword between them: nor can call
all the Art we use revive them from this Lethargy, so unfit they are
for Action, that like young Train-band-men when called upon Duty,
their Ammunition is wanting; peradventure they Present, but cannot
give Fire, or at least do but flash in the Pan, instead of doing
executions.

.

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