From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Path: news.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: David Kastrup Newsgroups: gmane.lisp.guile.devel Subject: Re: Why not support (begin), (cond), (case-lambda), etc? Date: Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:19:11 +0100 Message-ID: <87ipkox0qo.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> References: <871urdd593.fsf@netris.org> <87obuhbey2.fsf@netris.org> <87k455b6l2.fsf@netris.org> <87fwftxbi5.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <87boqhxadr.fsf@fencepost.gnu.org> <87boqgn70l.fsf@pobox.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: lo.gmane.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain X-Trace: dough.gmane.org 1325866767 25080 80.91.229.12 (6 Jan 2012 16:19:27 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@dough.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 16:19:27 +0000 (UTC) Cc: guile-devel@gnu.org To: Andy Wingo Original-X-From: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Fri Jan 06 17:19:23 2012 Return-path: Envelope-to: guile-devel@m.gmane.org Original-Received: from lists.gnu.org ([140.186.70.17]) by lo.gmane.org with esmtp (Exim 4.69) (envelope-from ) id 1RjCVl-0006Ym-Ch for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:19:21 +0100 Original-Received: from localhost ([::1]:44959 helo=lists.gnu.org) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RjCVk-0005V3-TI for guile-devel@m.gmane.org; Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:19:20 -0500 Original-Received: from eggs.gnu.org ([140.186.70.92]:40742) by lists.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RjCVh-0005Tk-8J for guile-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:19:18 -0500 Original-Received: from Debian-exim by eggs.gnu.org with spam-scanned (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RjCVd-0003TB-4Z for guile-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:19:17 -0500 Original-Received: from fencepost.gnu.org ([140.186.70.10]:44412) by eggs.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RjCVc-0003T7-Vi for guile-devel@gnu.org; Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:19:13 -0500 Original-Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1]:54333 helo=lola) by fencepost.gnu.org with esmtp (Exim 4.71) (envelope-from ) id 1RjCVc-0007o7-GM; Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:19:12 -0500 Original-Received: by lola (Postfix, from userid 1000) id AAA73E0423; Fri, 6 Jan 2012 17:19:11 +0100 (CET) In-Reply-To: <87boqgn70l.fsf@pobox.com> (Andy Wingo's message of "Fri, 06 Jan 2012 11:13:46 -0500") User-Agent: Gnus/5.13 (Gnus v5.13) Emacs/24.0.92 (gnu/linux) X-detected-operating-system: by eggs.gnu.org: GNU/Linux 2.6 (newer, 3) X-Received-From: 140.186.70.10 X-BeenThere: guile-devel@gnu.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.14 Precedence: list List-Id: "Developers list for Guile, the GNU extensibility library" List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , Errors-To: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Original-Sender: guile-devel-bounces+guile-devel=m.gmane.org@gnu.org Xref: news.gmane.org gmane.lisp.guile.devel:13353 Archived-At: Andy Wingo writes: > On Fri 06 Jan 2012 07:50, David Kastrup writes: > >> Do you think that we should remove the passage >> >> `concatenate' is the same as `(apply append LIST-OF-LISTS)'. It >> exists because some Scheme implementations have a limit on the >> number of arguments a function takes, which the `apply' might >> exceed. In Guile there is no such limit. >> >> from the manual in order not to seduce people into using Guile? > > We should remove it, because it is currently incorrect. (Apply splats > the lists on the stack, and thus you might run out of stack. Growing > and shrinking the stack on over/underflow is something that needs > doing.) > >> Why should be try to educate people into using a programming style that >> delivers suboptimal results with Guile? >> >> Where is the point into keeping Guile in every regard at least as bad as >> its worst competitor? > > Be nice, please. Alex was just trying to help. I was not actually trying to be non-nice here. But the point Alex was making is that we should not encourage any usage of Scheme that might work only with Guile, and that we should not let Guile support any practice that might fail elsewhere. And I don't get the rationale for that. Why should we strive hard to make Guile worse than necessary, just to make it easier for people to stop using it for their applications? -- David Kastrup