Re: GNU Guile 2.9.9 Released [beta]

[Stefan Israelsson Tampe <stefan.itampe@gmail.com>]

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I'm not stupid and I don't see any good reason why you cannot maintain a
way to keep function identities. I could go as far as having a primitive to
mark a procedure for keeping the identity.

But No  No, please apply the patch. For example the nice thing with python
on guile is that python functions is also scheme functions and vice versa
without the procedure identity (eq? f f) = #t you will need
to wrap every single scheme call and totally destroy python on guile. It
will be a mess. So I would probably not make a python on guile release for
guile 3.0. Also Not guile log because it also
is highly invested using procedures as hash keys. What I would probably do
is to apply wingos patch and demand other who want guile 3.0 and python on
guile and guile-log to do the same.

Regards
Stefan

On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 5:47 PM Mikael Djurfeldt <mikael@djurfeldt.com>
wrote:

> It might be reasonable to keep the patch for now in order not to introduce
> novel behavior this short before the 3.0 release.
>
> But especially in light of Andy's work, I do regret introducing
> procedure-properties. It's a more LISPy feature than Schemey. Did you see
> Andy's argument about procedure equality below?
>
> I would have preferred to postpone the release and drop procedure
> equality, procedure-properties etc. It can be handy and convenient, yes,
> but there is a reason why R6RS didn't require (eq? p p) -> #t...
>
> Best regards,
> Mikael
>
> On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 5:37 PM Stefan Israelsson Tampe <
> stefan.itampe@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------
>> From: Stefan Israelsson Tampe <stefan.itampe@gmail.com>
>> Date: Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 5:23 PM
>> Subject: Re: GNU Guile 2.9.9 Released [beta]
>> To: Mikael Djurfeldt <mikael@djurfeldt.com>
>>
>>
>> This is how it always have been in guile, without this patch you cannot
>> use procedure-property, use a function as a key to hash maps etc. If
>> this patch goes you need to forbid usage
>> of procedures as keys to hashmap, nuke procedure properties and friends
>> or mark it as internal to avoid luring schemers into using a faulty method.
>> This patch improves the use of higher order functions
>> not risk it. For example I often classify functions into different
>> categories and maintain this information as a property on the function via
>> a hashmap. This is a quite natural way of programming. Without it you need
>> to put the procedures in a datastructure and track that datastructure
>> that will uglify a lot of code. It is manageable but when the opposite is
>> similarly speeded code but much nicer and enjoyable code with absolutely no
>> risk in
>> higher order functionality countrary as you state (because higher order
>> worked flawlessly before in guile and the patch is restoring that).
>>
>> On Tue, Jan 14, 2020 at 5:07 PM Mikael Djurfeldt <mikael@djurfeldt.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hmm... it seems like both Stefan and you have interpreted my post
>>> exactly the opposite way compared to how it was meant. :)
>>>
>>> I completely agree that procedure equality is not strongly connected to
>>> the first citizen-ness.
>>>
>>> What I wanted to say is that I probably prefer you to *reverse* the
>>> recent patch because I prefer to have good optimization also when
>>> procedures are referenced by value in more than one non-operator position.
>>> I prefer this over having (eq? p p) => #t for the reasons I stated.
>>>
>>> Best regards,
>>> Mikael
>>>
>>> Den tis 14 jan. 2020 15:33Andy Wingo <wingo@pobox.com> skrev:
>>>
>>>> On Tue 14 Jan 2020 13:18, Mikael Djurfeldt <mikael@djurfeldt.com>
>>>> writes:
>>>>
>>>> > I probably don't have a clue about what you are talking about (or at
>>>> > least hope so), but this---the "eq change"---sounds scary to me.
>>>> >
>>>> > One of the *strengths* of Scheme is that procedures are first class
>>>> > citizens. As wonderfully show-cased in e.g. SICP this can be used to
>>>> > obtain expressive and concise programs, where procedures can occur
>>>> > many times as values outside operator position.
>>>> >
>>>> > I would certainly *not* want to trade in an important optimization
>>>> > step in those cases to obtain intuitive procedure equality. The risk
>>>> > is then that you would tend to avoid passing around procedures as
>>>> > values.
>>>>
>>>> Is this true?
>>>>
>>>>   (eq? '() '())
>>>>
>>>> What about this?
>>>>
>>>>   (eq? '(a) '(a))
>>>>
>>>> And yet, are datums not first-class values?  What does being first-class
>>>> have to do with it?
>>>>
>>>> Does it matter whether it's eq? or eqv?
>>>>
>>>> What about:
>>>>
>>>>   (eq? (lambda () 10) (lambda () 10))
>>>>
>>>> What's the difference?
>>>>
>>>> What's the difference in the lambda calculus between "\x.f x" and "f"?
>>>>
>>>> What if in a partial evaluator, you see a `(eq? x y)`, and you notice
>>>> that `x' is bound to a lambda expression?  Can you say anything about
>>>> the value of the expression?
>>>>
>>>> Does comparing procedures for equality mean anything at all?
>>>> https://cs-syd.eu/posts/2016-01-17-function-equality-in-haskell
>>>>
>>>> Anyway :)  All that is a bit of trolling on my part.  What I mean to say
>>>> is that instincts are tricky when it comes to object identity, equality,
>>>> equivalence, and especially all of those combined with procedures.  The
>>>> R6RS (what can be more Schemely than a Scheme standard?) makes this
>>>> clear.
>>>>
>>>> All that said, with the recent patch, I believe that Guile 3.0's
>>>> behavior preserves your intuitions.  Bug reports very welcome!
>>>>
>>>> Andy
>>>>
>>>

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