Re:How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)
by patrickmay on Wednesday March 14, 2018 @08:59AM
(#16584430)
Good list. I'd add macros and the conditions mechanism for error handling. The latter still has no analogue in other languages.
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Re:How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)
by AnimalMuppet on Wednesday March 14, 2018 @03:13PM
(#16587460)
> The latter [the conditions mechanism for error handling] still has no analogue in other languages.
Could you explain this for a non-Lisp person? (I have some understanding of macros already.)
Re:How knowing Lisp destroyed my programming career (2006)
by vzcx on Wednesday March 14, 2018 @06:42PM
(#16589009)
The CL condition system separates the signaling of a condition (of which errors are a subtype), the handling of a condition, and the definition of recovery strategies (restarts).
Instead of unwinding the stack when a condition is signaled, handler code is invoked in the dynamic context of the signal and thus has much more information available to decide how to recover.
If a decision on how to recover can't be made programmatically, the system kicks out to the user where they are presented with the choices you have given them.
See: http://www.nhplace.com/kent/Papers/Condition-Handling-2001.h... for more.