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: Drifting towards a statically typed Emacs Lisp. [Was: Introducing 'safety' compilation parameter] Date: Tue, 07 May 2024 13:06:58 -0400 Message-ID: References: <86v83pahks.fsf@gnu.org> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain Injection-Info: ciao.gmane.io; posting-host="blaine.gmane.org:116.202.254.214"; logging-data="20677"; mail-complaints-to="usenet@ciao.gmane.io" User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Cc: Eli Zaretskii , emacs-devel@gnu.org, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, mattias.engdegard@gmail.com, stefankangas@gmail.com To: Alan Mackenzie Original-X-From: emacs-devel-bounces+ged-emacs-devel=m.gmane-mx.org@gnu.org Tue May 07 19:07:54 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 1s4OIC-00056E-BN for ged-emacs-devel@m.gmane-mx.org; Tue, 07 May 2024 19:07:52 +0200 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1] helo=lists1p.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1s4OHN-0000xJ-My; Tue, 07 May 2024 13:07:01 -0400 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 1s4OHL-0000vy-PJ for emacs-devel@gnu.org; Tue, 07 May 2024 13:06:59 -0400 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 1s4OHK-0005XQ-LW; Tue, 07 May 2024 13:06:58 -0400 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=Uq256baLoGnVC87qh8JLlsL0GQ0DbAOgfffzUPLcGfg=; b=DKYqwK7pHOOjC40mlCev 8Y79tvIrt8II++UfVlcvd2BnwvhOo9np36y8GbL48KhxvVQQSECuN4jQD5KyH0zuImh09Nx6esxUz yTkNH1O6iejLGlS1QxVwNeFpRbEtZ3bVXjIx5kMRUs0JHx2dpE2eCX2rQUbFp8G84JBU5xRmgnXxx ofTW3EbS785mDEzHzBs98ICsAyK7nPV/8Vrxe0aPpQMU/wSnSKLkE0iIl2NK5HHKsX/Pjx5t32/aM ix1QJHoHKkAEmGFZb6/pMyF/ntIC+WG3c3Spr/vAzW5hYq72/1hkCq+lCQ8oOUjPy5I35HosN8Qzh waw3HliJwQbxuQ==; Original-Received: from acorallo by fencepost.gnu.org with local (Exim 4.90_1) (envelope-from ) id 1s4OHK-0000jt-9t; Tue, 07 May 2024 13:06:58 -0400 In-Reply-To: (Alan Mackenzie's message of "Tue, 7 May 2024 16:07:58 +0000") 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:318962 Archived-At: Alan Mackenzie writes: > Hello, Eli. > > On Tue, May 07, 2024 at 16:15:47 +0300, Eli Zaretskii wrote: >> > Date: Tue, 7 May 2024 12:01:33 +0000 >> > Cc: emacs-devel@gnu.org, Eli Zaretskii , >> > monnier@iro.umontreal.ca, mattias.engdegard@gmail.com, >> > stefankangas@gmail.com >> > From: Alan Mackenzie > >> > I see this change as one more boil-the-frog-slowly step towards turning >> > Emacs Lisp into a statically typed language. > >> Alan, please be kinder, even if you dislike very much suggestions of >> others. > > No offence was intended. > >> The above could have been easily rephrased as > >> Emacs Lisp should not be turned into a statically typed language. > >> without losing any useful content, .... > > Not really - what would have been lost is the equivalent of ".... and I > see this process happening at the moment.". The frog metaphor was an > economical way of phrasing this. Again, I'm sorry it caused offence. > >> .... including your strenuous objection to the change. > > I see Emacs Lisp steadily drifting towards being statically typed, and I > don't think that's a good thing. As far as I'm aware, there has been no > general agreement amongst Emacs developers for this (unless it's > happened as a side-thread in some thread without having an accurate > Subject:). > > We currently have the prospect of lots of functions being cluttered up > with "type" declarations. We already have meaningless (to a Lisp > programmer) things like: > > Inferred type: (function (&optional t t) t) > > appearing in prominent positions in doc strings. Why? Because it can be informative (when there are types other than t), anyway you can control it with 'help-display-function-type' if you don't want to have it in the *Help* buffer. > If this is the way Emacs Lisp is to develop, can't we at least have an > open discussion about it and a positive decision taken, rather than > letting it "just happen"? As is already clear, I see static typing in > Emacs Lisp, except, perhaps, on a very limited scale, as a Bad Thing. Again, there's no plan to make elisp statically typed. I agree with you this is a tool to be used on a limited scale, if this is not clear enough from the doc now I guess we can just improve it. Andrea