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From: Andreas Enge <andreas@enge.fr>
To: "Ludovic Courtès" <ludo@gnu.org>
Cc: guix-devel <guix-devel@gnu.org>
Subject: Re: Using #true and #false everywhere?
Date: Tue, 20 Oct 2020 12:32:44 +0200	[thread overview]
Message-ID: <20201020103244.GB6805@jurong> (raw)
In-Reply-To: <875z7a78ww.fsf@gnu.org>

And since we are on the bikeshedding front, I feel like writing a second
message.

On Fri, Oct 16, 2020 at 12:38:23PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote:
> As discussed on IRC recently, several of us think that using “#true” and
> “#false” instead of “#t” and “#f” throughout or documentation and code
> would probably make it easier for newcomers to decipher that.

Honestly, I think either of them is sufficiently easy to understand, in the
presence of much more difficult questions:
- The "non-typedness of booleans": Does "(if 1 2 3)" raise an exception or
  work, and if the latter is true, what is the result? And if I replace
  "1" by "0" or the empty list? (In Guix, this is related to the question:
  Do I need to add #t or #f at the end of a phase, or is the value of its
  last statement sufficient?)
- What are the different procedures for comparing things?
- What are quotes, quasiquotes, unquotes? How do they relate to code staging
  in Guix? (This is to me the most difficult part of Guix code, in particular
  for someone coming from a language where code is code and data are data.)
- Actually, why are there two ways to define literal lists? Do they have
  the same result? This is a mixture of the previous two questions; try
     (eq? '(1) '(1))
  vs.
     (eq? '(1) (list 1))
  or
     (eq? (list 1) (list 1))
  Then try again with eqv? and equal?.
  Then try again with "(eq? '() (list))" and so on. (This one still
  surprises me.)
  Does it matter? (Probably not much in the context of Guix.)
- If I want to know what are and what happens in the phases of
  the perl build system, do I look in build/perl-build-system.scm or
  build-system/perl.scm? Why is there no build-system/perl-build-system.scm
  or build/perl.scm instead? (Just a little trolling at the end of my post,
  no real harm intended ;-) But I am honestly unable to remember the answer,
  and look at the two files every time I wonder about a build system, which
  is of course entirely feasible, some might even argue instructional.)

Andreas



  parent reply	other threads:[~2020-10-20 10:33 UTC|newest]

Thread overview: 31+ messages / expand[flat|nested]  mbox.gz  Atom feed  top
2020-10-16 10:38 Using #true and #false everywhere? Ludovic Courtès
2020-10-16 13:19 ` Maxim Cournoyer
2020-10-16 13:36   ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2020-10-18  1:36     ` Maxim Cournoyer
2020-10-18  2:22       ` Bengt Richter
2020-10-19 20:45       ` zimoun
2020-10-21  9:56         ` Ludovic Courtès
2020-10-20  9:57     ` Andreas Enge
2020-10-21  9:59       ` Ludovic Courtès
2020-10-21 11:21         ` Andreas Enge
2020-10-21 15:52           ` Ludovic Courtès
2020-10-21 11:51         ` Roel Janssen
2020-10-16 16:24 ` Vagrant Cascadian
2020-10-16 23:45 ` Danny Milosavljevic
2020-10-20 10:32 ` Andreas Enge [this message]
2020-10-20 11:10   ` Ricardo Wurmus
2020-10-20 12:02     ` zimoun
2020-10-20 12:59       ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2020-10-20 13:11         ` zimoun
2020-10-20 13:32           ` Tobias Geerinckx-Rice
2020-10-20 14:26             ` zimoun
2020-10-20 15:48               ` Taylan Kammer
2020-10-21  1:25     ` Mark H Weaver
2020-10-21  6:18       ` Ricardo Wurmus
2020-10-21 10:04         ` Ludovic Courtès
2020-10-20 12:45   ` zimoun
2020-10-20 12:55     ` Andreas Enge
2020-10-21 10:20   ` Ludovic Courtès
2020-10-24 18:29 ` Robin Templeton
  -- strict thread matches above, loose matches on Subject: below --
2020-10-16 22:06 Miguel Ángel Arruga Vivas
2020-10-17  0:25 ` jbranso

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