[Haskell-cafe] Haskell-Cafe Info Page

[Don Stewart]

allbery:
>    On 2008 May 17, at 14:52, D. Gregor wrote:
> 
>      Common Lisp is a multiparadigm, general purpose programming language
>      that supports imperative, functional, and object-oriented programming
>      paradigms.  Haskell is purely functional.  Is this a reason why there is
>      not macro feature in Haskell?  I feel the object-oriented paradigm of CL
>      and Scheme is the reason for the macro feature in these two languages.
>       If it's not, then what does the macro feature provide, and why isn't it
>      in Haskell?
> 
>    Macros in Lisp have less to do with functional vs. non-functional than
>    with programs and data having precisely the same form (s-expressions).
>    There is a macro facility of the kind you're thinking of in Haskell
>    (Template Haskell), but you have to work with abstract syntax tables which
>    look nothing like the original code.

Also, laziness is used for many of the coding jobs you might use macros
for. So there's less need for macros.

-- Don