Re:Why Lisp?
by dllthomas on Thursday May 07, 2015 @07:31PM
(#9509104)
One thing to note is that you're using the macro or lambda to delay evaluation. In a lazy-by-default language, that's unnecessary (which is a part of why macros are less useful in Haskell).
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There's a class of things that don't require macros in Haskell, but I don't think that means macros are less useful in Haskell. There are plenty of things you might want them for, like generating new definitions.
I certainly didn't want to imply that macros were not useful in Haskell. Just that there's good reasons you see them less often.
Depriving a Haskell programmer of the ability to define new macros is going to hurt a whole lot less than depriving a Lisp programmer of the same.
True. They are still useful enough for Template Haskell to exist.