[mercury-users] lisp macros

[Peter Schachte]

> Yes, but we don't want the hoi polloi being able to do that!  If you
> make it part of the language then you don't force developers to go
> through the traditional syntax war process (my tongue is only half in
> cheek on this one.)

Are you saying that because the Mercury group makes these decisions,
they are well debated and clearly thought out, whereas another
organization would not do so well?  I must differ.  Within the Mercury
group, perhaps a dozen people think about the issues.  Outside, when
Mercury becomes popular, thousands of people may pick over several
competing libraries implementing a desirable feature, choosing the
best one or combining the best features of several.  Currently, there
are probably more people working on the Mercury system than using it,
but hopefully the balance will tip very far the other way over time.

The flip side of this issue is that because the only practical way to
add syntactic features that can be used in Mercury programs is to add
them to the language, every desirable feature winds up as part of the
language standard.  This way you wind up with a large, complex
language, rather than a large library and small, clean langauge.  PL/I
instead of C.  I think Mercury is already suffering from this
syndrome.  I know I'm at least as apt to propose syntactic extensions
as the next person, but I'd rather put them in the library.

-- 
Peter Schachte              The fantastic advances in the field of
schachte at cs.mu.OZ.AU        communication constitute a grave danger to the
www.cs.mu.oz.au/~schachte/  privacy of the individual.
Phone: +61 3 8344 9166          -- Earl Warren 
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