[Haskell-cafe] Doing some things right

[Brian Sniffen]

On Dec 28, 2007 6:05 AM, Andrew Coppin <andrewcoppin at btinternet.com> wrote:
> [I actually heard a number of people tell me that learning LISP would
> change my life forever because LISP has something called "macros". I
> tried to learn it, and disliked it greatly. It's too messy. And what the
> heck is "cdr" ment to mean anyway? To me, LISP doesn't even seem all
> that different from normal languages (modulo weird syntax). Now
> Haskell... that's FUN!]

Contents of Data Register.

Macros are like Template Haskell.  One example of where they're useful
is programmer definition of new binding forms.  That's not possible in
Haskell without Templates.  Macros were invented in Lisp because the
syntax is so easy for machine manipulation---they don't have a tenth
the complexity of Template Haskell for about the same power.

-Brian

-- 
Brian T. Sniffen
bts at alum.mit.edu    or    brian.sniffen at gmail.com
http://www.evenmere.org/~bts