IMO, I think that it is better to have two names so that people are not confused by the possibly radically different performance characteristics when they do things like introduce a variable or something.
Robby On Thu, Jan 12, 2012 at 4:32 PM, Eli Barzilay <e...@barzilay.org> wrote: > 50 minutes ago, Neil Toronto wrote: >> On 01/12/2012 02:25 PM, Eli Barzilay wrote: >> > 20 minutes ago, Neil Toronto wrote: >> >> >> >> This is friggin' awesome. The expression >> >> >> >> (compiled-left-arrow-icon '(255 95 78) 24) >> > >> > Why is there a `compiled-' in the name? >> >> There's also a "left-arrow-icon" function, which renders it at runtime. >> The "compiled" part means: >> >> * This icon is rendered statically. >> >> * There are restrictions on the arguments. > > I'd expect a single `left-arrow-icon' function, which in some cases > can be "optimized" by being pre-compiled by a macro. IOW, rename the > current `compiled-left-arrow-icon' to `left-arrow-icon', and rename > the `left-arrow-icon' to some internal name that is not exposed. Then > make it so that if it isn't possible to to pre-compile the form > statically, then it expands to the dynamic one. This way people don't > have to worry about implementation issues, and simply use the > "function". Possibly also spit out some log warning if it can't be > compiled statically, for debugging. > > >> > I think that it was on the r6rs list that during some >> > macro-related flame I posted something about invoking a C compiler >> > as part of a macro expansion, and someone replied that it sounded >> > crazy. (I think that the argument was that macros should really >> > only do simple `syntax-rules'-like things.) >> >> My mad-scientist advisor has actually done this. (I'm going to keep >> a tally of the number of times I write that.) I used it once to make >> building an FFI easier. What was it called... "Super C"? Not >> terribly portable, but very cool. > > Yes, that's what I was referring to in that post. > > > A few minutes ago, Jay McCarthy wrote: >> >> I use it every year teaching PLAI so I can give little C examples. > > Good idea... (But I don't do C in my course... Maybe I should, just > to make the interoperability point...) > > -- > ((lambda (x) (x x)) (lambda (x) (x x))) Eli Barzilay: > http://barzilay.org/ Maze is Life! > _________________________ > Racket Developers list: > http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev _________________________ Racket Developers list: http://lists.racket-lang.org/dev
