Re: Advantage using mapc over dolist

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> on the contrary, it is better to use specific tools and avoid more
> general tools when possible in order to lower cognitive load.

Again, that's a personal preference.  If you have to learn the more
general tool anyway, then having to additionally learn the more specific
tool may increase rather than lower the cognitive load.

So you might in fact prefer to introduce another "simple case" construct
which uses the same syntax as `pcase` but supports only a strict subset
(the "simple" subset).  Of course, you don't need to learn all of
`pcase` in order to read&write the simple cases anyway, so we haven't
bothered to introduce such a construct.

> also the more general a tool is the less useful other orthogonal tools
> become.  see how much nicer eldoc is with cl-case and cl-ecase?

AFAICT the difference is unrelated to the difference in semantics
between the two tools, but is just the result of a different style of
writing in the docstring.

Maybe you're right that we should provide a more specific usage in the
docstring so that `C-h f` and Eldoc show something like

    (pcase EXP (PATTERN BODY...)...)

I don't have an opinion about that.


        Stefan