Re:Lisp: it's not about macros, it's about READ (2012)
by wtetzner on Monday July 18, 2016 @11:12AM
(#12115503)
Yes, that's true, but they were saying they wanted macros in non-lisp languages. I gave an example of a non-lisp language that has lisp-like macros.
Re:Lisp: it's not about macros, it's about READ (2012)
by eggy on Monday July 18, 2016 @05:42PM
(#12118221)
Granted. I guess it boils down to degree of 'Lisp-like' when talking macros. Another article on HN today about Racket, Template Haskell and macros. I think the whole idea is that Haskell doesn't really need them, since it has other ways of achieving similar ends thereby making TH macros a bad fit for Haskell.
I like Elixir a lot, but I have the luxury of not depending on coding for a living, so I am learning LFE because I like how it is as much a Lisp as it can be when constrained by the BEAM. Truthfully, I could stay away from all of the distributed languages like Erlang, Elixir, LFE, Pony and others, since I don't really have a use for them (yet - looking at ABM Agent-Based Modeling).
But I keep at LFE by trying to duplicate the book 'The Handbook of Neuroevolution Through Erlang'. There are at least a couple of other people who have started it in LFE and the other in Elixir. A good fit for ANNs.
Re:Lisp: it's not about macros, it's about READ (2012)
by wtbob on Monday July 18, 2016 @07:26PM
(#12118584)
> they were saying they wanted macros in non-lisp languages.
He; I don't have multiple personalities
Re:Lisp: it's not about macros, it's about READ (2012)
by wtetzner on Tuesday July 19, 2016 @11:11AM
(#12122215)
Yes, I didn't mean to suggest you do :)
I was using the singular they: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singular_they
To quote, Robert Virding, one of Erlang's creators and the creator of LFE:
I would say that one restriction with the type of macros that elixir has, irrespective of whether we call it homoiconic or not, is that they can only manipulate existing forms in the AST, they can't define new syntactic forms. In elixir this means that you basically work with function calls. There is syntactic support for making the function calls look less like function calls but the macros you define are basically function calls. In Lisp you are free to create completely new syntactic forms. Whether this is a feature of the homoiconicity of Lisp or of Lisp itself is another question as the Lisp syntax is very simple and everything basically has the same structure anyway. Some people say Lisp has no syntax. [2]
[1] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/35060080/erlang-vs-elixir... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7623991