Re: 10 problems with Elisp, part 10 (was: Re: Emacs website, Lisp, and other)

[Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>]

* Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> [2024-08-05 19:31]:
> Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> 
> > Please, everybody, take the Lisp vs Python argument off this
> > list, it is off-topic here. If you must discuss this, please
> > use the emacs-tangents@gnu.org mailing list instead.
> 
> Sure, but we are allowed to discuss how to make Elisp better?
> 
> Since Python has had enormous success, and Lisp hasn't - or if
> it had, it lost it - it might be a good ide to analyze what
> they (Python) did good.

Do you mean making Elisp better in the eyes of the world, or technically for Elisp users?

There are obviously many Elisp users, worth enough for developing it
technically, improving it, that is fine and good. And developers are
doing it. We are here in society of Elisp users.

For the eyes of the world, does it matter? I do not see how it does
matter.  Last time I checked, there must be millions of Emacs
users. Not all of them are loud and talking. I just guess that
majority does not even know about Elisp. But there is large number of
Emacs users, as there is large number of GNU/Linux users, and growing.

They may open editor and write something. They may not know about
Elisp, though they soon find out, so it is surely growing. Watching
our mailing lists I can see new users coming.

Comparisons like Python vs Elisp are useless as it is just interesting
for discussion and some language wars in old style.

What is useful is practical program, software, which is made and
provides final benefits.

A single program, no matter the language, can provide huge success.

For more technical insight into the war general Lisp vs Python:
http://www.norvig.com/python-lisp.html

>     Apply on data in data structures, not on data as it appears in
>     Emacs buffers.) But how ever well one does, it is gonna be _a
>     lot_ of of moving point around in Emacs Lisp, so don't worry :)

Statements were exaggerated. You have various data structures, and if
you need to operate on buffer, operate. Personally I operate on
hashes, and lists, and vectors, etc. Not on buffers. I cannot find
your statement universal.

> Example of problem from my favorite part of Emacs, ispell.el:
> 
> (defun ispell-mime-multipartp (&optional limit)
>   "Return multipart message start boundary or nil if none."
>   ;; caller must ensure `case-fold-search' is set to t
>   (and
>    (re-search-forward
>     "Content-Type: *multipart/\\([^ \t\n]*;[ \t]*[\n]?[ \t]*\\)+boundary="
>     limit t)
>    (let (boundary)
>      (if (looking-at "\"")
> 	 (let (start)
> 	   (forward-char)
> 	   (setq start (point))
> 	   (while (not (looking-at "\""))
> 	     (forward-char 1))
> 	   (setq boundary (buffer-substring-no-properties start (point))))
>        (let ((start (point)))
> 	 (while (looking-at "[-0-9a-zA-Z'()+_,./:=?]")
> 	   (forward-char))
> 	 (setq boundary (buffer-substring-no-properties start (point)))))
>      (if (< (length boundary) 1)
> 	 (setq boundary nil)
>        (concat "--" boundary)))))
> 
> Moving point around, looking, searching, seeing or not seeing.
> This is boring and error prone to write, and error prone to
> take over from someone else, or return to after x years.

Come on. All programming is about looking, searching, and of course it
can be boring and error prone, I remember machine language, of course
it is error prone, there is no programming language not error prone.

> You don't think in terms of the problem, or the solution for
> that matter, you are just somewhere in the buffer and
> according the the map you are completely lost!

That is why some developers are lost, some are okay with it.


Jean

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