Convincing Programmers They Want To Use Lisp

Re:Convincing Programmers They Want To Use Lisp by barrydahlberg on Monday February 21, 2011 @04:09PM (#2247193)

And now no one can forget to close the file, plus it’s shorter as well. There is no way to do this in a non Lisp language.

C# has the IDisposable + using construct for exactly this purpose. If you're not happy with that you can write your own using a lambda, just like his example...

  using (open file here)
  {
    // Do work here
  }

  WithNetFile(f => do work here);

Lisp is neat, this is not a great argument though.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Convincing Programmers They Want To Use Lisp by js2 on Monday February 21, 2011 @04:44PM (#2247337)

The this the original author is referring to is macros, of which, with-net-file is merely an example.

The author makes this clear later in the post: "Once you have caught the programmer’s interest with simple macros show them some other cool things they can do, like language extensions. Experienced programmers are always looking for more control, and macros give it to them."

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Convincing Programmers They Want To Use Lisp by barrydahlberg on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @03:50AM (#2249246)

Yes, but he is giving this as an example of how to hook programmers into learning Lisp. I'm all on board with the macros, but you have to do better than this as an argument.

[ Parent | on HN ]