Re: [Gnu-arch-users] Re: Tla spork

[Andrew Suffield]

On Fri, Aug 27, 2004 at 07:46:07PM +0200, Robin Farine wrote:
> In C for instance, making use of precedence rules to spare a few 
> ( and ) is a good way to force the next developer to stare for a 
> few minutes at an expression before he finally decides to add the 
> spared ( and ) for safety.

This is the case where the expression has been written in a stupid way
anyway. Languages should focus on improving things in the non-stupid
case.

> > I will also say, though, Andrew Suffields alternative Fibbonacci
> > sequence using Haskell looks rather clean.
> 
> Yes, but it looks clean mainly because of the semantics of the 
> guards (not unlike how forward inference engines like OPS-5 work by 
> the way), not really thanks to its syntax.

Rather, it's because of a sequence of small, simple, incremental
syntax rules that gradually eliminate useless noise. I didn't cover
*all* the rules Haskell has for this, but I did cover a few of the
more interesting ones.

> The nice property of the syntax of Lisp dialects is that everything 
> is either an atom, an empty list or a list of atoms. A program can 
> manipulate a program as it manipulates data. I do not know if 
> Haskell is able to this in such an elegant way, though.

Haskell doesn't accept the notion of 'data'. There is only
program. The implications should be obvious.

-- 
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