From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.io!.POSTED.blaine.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Andrea Corallo Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.devel Subject: Re: Declaring Lisp function types Date: Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:02:02 -0500 Message-ID: References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="23408"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Cc: Alan Mackenzie , emacs-devel@gnu.org To: Richard Stallman Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Thu Feb 29 10:03:31 2024 Return-path: Envelope-to: ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([209.51.188.17]) by ciao.gmane.io with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.92) (envelope-from ) id 1rfcKB-0005ru-Nh for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Thu, 29 Feb 2024 10:03:31 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1] helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1rfcJF-00071B-Bc; Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:02:33 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::10]) by lists.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1rfcJA-0006vP-BF for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:02:30 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([2001:470:142:3::e]) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtps (TLS1.2:ECDHE_RSA_AES_256_GCM_SHA384:256) (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1rfcJ9-0003Su-GB; Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:02:27 -0500 DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/relaxed; d=gnu.org; s=fencepost-gnu-org; h=MIME-Version:Date:References:In-Reply-To:Subject:To: From; bh=cCr1pDbqUOq7YsfM1tx9mNsw6Cp5+Z6vltcpXbR7c7E=; b=EgL8kS9jhy5wAvdpcpC1 Knid05/h/OsP2CQmwKGNED8rp6TjNx4WuBhDcwH4l/isSLUhPkYLvQOVO4jCB9Dw62IRPP5GB0W+n HDwM0Z4eI9pFvTCANfXkj21DIcFI3tTCyW+9bvvgyo/nFVjfSu7FKhvEXW+RgAKWfTzdJDAH0T2s3 +nBPkbksefZ//cI0jTu+d1brCYRK3um1oTZt6bKHEqncIshd+ELjjNrTfEzPHN106ZqbOqH5/uyuA GEtStE9T93L30yG+l3o/t9qlm/9/SlmSLMm43H9eXQPkmBzJ8sMC7RNQabqgBT62MLal3GN6butGd pKQK+BO3Du8Y7w==; Original-Received: from acorallo by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1rfcIq-00047m-Nl; Thu, 29 Feb 2024 04:02:12 -0500 In-Reply-To: (Richard Stallman's message of "Wed, 28 Feb 2024 22:50:33 -0500") X-BeenThere: emacs-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.29 Precedence: list List-Id: "Emacs development discussions." List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.io gmane.emacs.devel:316637 Archived-At: Richard Stallman writes: > [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]] > [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]] > [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]] > > > I worry that these declarations will become frequent, even pervasive, > > and then effectively compulsory. Then we won't have Lisp any more, > > we'll have something more like C. > > > I think somebody said somewhere that the declarations will be > > "voluntary", but things that start off voluntary have a nasty habit of > > first becoming pervasive, then all but universal, and then compulsory. > > That is my concern as well. If we let native compilation > lure us down the path of changing the Emacs Lisp language > so as to make native-compiled code faster, there is almost > no limit to how much time we could put into it. There are > always things we could do to keep optimizing some cases. > > This will tend to draw effort away from other sorts of improements in > GNU Emacs. We should decline to go down that path. Hi Richard, I don't think this is a realistic danger. Over the past years the contribution to the native compiler by developers other than me proved to be very sporadic, and even me I progress only when time allows. OTOH I believe performance is a sensitive subject for many users of the new generations who often make use of complex and heavy packages. I believe a faster Emacs would be a better and more future proof platform. > As long as we avoid that alteration of priorities, and use this > information about function argument types and likely value types only > as a kind of documentation for users, there is no reason not to > improve the way we store it and how users can access it. I'm pretty sure this will not alter any priority and yes, I think is a nice addition to the self-documenting capabilities of Emacs. Thanks Andrea