On Fri, 4 Feb 2005, Ville-Pertti Keinonen wrote:

> > (2) Speaking of syntax, there's a lot of unnecessary cruft in virtually 
> > any language besides LISP (or rather, Scheme).
> 
> Usually what someone considers "unnecessary cruft" is defined by what
> they're used to.  People are used to the annoyances of the languages
> they use the most and don't tend to notice them, but when using a less
> familiar language, pay a lot of attention to anything that seems more
> cumbersome.
> 
> As an obvious example, neither Common Lisp or Scheme have
> pattern-matching.  Accessing data via pattern matching is often far more
> convenient than via c[ad]+r, slot accessors etc.

Sure! But Lisp gives me the freedom to add it via a library. Which also 
kind of says that it's unnecessary to complicate the core language by 
putting in such a conceptually ad-hoc feature.

Of course, from the LISP point of view, virtually anything that's done by 
other languages is conceptually ad-hoc, and can easily be added by 
extending the language. ;-)

-- 
regards,               tf@cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de              (o_
 Thomas Fischbacher -  http://www.cip.physik.uni-muenchen.de/~tf  //\
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