Subject: Re: Functional programming From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no> Date: 1999/11/10 Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Message-ID: <3151185924706494@naggum.no> * Christophe Kirkwood-Watts 0790340 <kirkwood@cna0790340.rsc.raytheon.com> | True, true. (apply #'funcall <list>) is quite a bit more elegant than the | latter; however, this is generally not the way work gets done in Scheme, | as you no doubt know. please get your attributions right. I'm taking a Schemer's proposed code as a given. I make no representation to write elegant Scheme code. far from it, I think Scheme is an _inelegant_ language the exact same way I think anything else that is beautiful only when tiny and undeveloped grows into huge morasses of disgustitude when actually put to real use, like GUILE. it actually amazes me constantly that the elegance of Scheme does not scale beyond the standard and the core language, but it's like they say in biology: an insect is built the way it is because it is so small, and an elephant the way it is because it is so big. both work quite well with their body builds, while neither would work with the others' body build even when scaled appropriately. design a language as elegant and small as an insect, and it will collapse under its own weight if it tries to grow big, but design a language able to grow big systems, and it will necessarily look extremely bloated if scaled down to the insect size that some people use to jugde languages and applications, like the size of "hello, world" programs, to take the glaring example. | I tend to agree with the sentiment that much of the elegance of Scheme is | due to the sparsity of the language; however, formulating arguments which | only prove that _you_ are capable of constructing a solution in Scheme, | which is extremely ugly in the face of the elegant Common Lisp solution, | really doesn't tell me very much about the Scheme _language_. just you get your attributions right, mister, and this will all rectify itself automatically. and check your blood pressure while you're at it. I don't like Scheme, and I make no bones about it. if you don't like that somebody thinks Scheme is ugly and the Scheme community silly for its insistence on elegance through missing features, learn to live with. #:Erik -- Attention Microsoft Shoppers! MS Monopoly Money 6.0 are now worthless.