Subject: Re: Lisp & SICP
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.no>
Date: 2000/05/15
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3167404914296510@naggum.no>

* Chuck Fry
| Maybe I'm ignorant.  It seems to me that Scheme has an implicit
| funcall.

  To recap: Andrew Cooke said Scheme didn't need _apply_.  That's
  bogus -- Scheme doesn't "need" funcall because of its "single
  namespace" mistake.  However, the reduced need for funcall didn't
  arise because of the reduction of namespaces -- it makes sense to
  retain this mechanism even if you have only one namespace.

  I don't think an implicit funcall is anything but a great loss, and
  certainly do _not_ think it's a feature.  I think it makes code
  harder to read and a lot messier by virtue of crowding _my_ brain's
  namespace (which matters more to me than the compiler's).  Actually,
  I think the missing funcall is just one more of Scheme's many, many
  misguided shots at a pointless notion of "elegance by taking away".

#:Erik
-- 
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