On Thu, Oct 9, 2008 at 2:31 PM, Brendan Eich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip] > Sorry for the very tardy reply. You make good points in the abstract, and > the messy language-specific details of existing semantics for functions not > being clean enough deserves a better response than just "don't desugar". > > I stand by "don't desugar let to functions as-is". I argued for "let" desugaring to "function" and I understand the problems with "arguments", "this" and "return". In light of the "lambda" idea below and that "let" could desugar to that more intuitively (i.e. Tenent's principle) to "lambda", I think what I was really asking/arguing for was an axiomatic definition of the language. That is, "let" should should desugar to something more fundamental. > I'm also pretty certain > "don't add more modes or subsets to try to fix existing forms" is sound, > since versionitis does not help us either keep the spec simple or specify > the backward-compatible semantics in the full language. This makes really good sense to me. Things like modes that affect semantics of forms makes me uncomfortable. > So, to avoid trouble, we've been thinking of new forms including a better > function, call it lambda, Please call it "lambda"! :) > that has none of the compatibility baggage. I say > "we" but really Dave Herman deserves credit for championing this. Dave Herman for president! > A "lambda" > form has been a topic now and then for a while, on this list and in > committee, and sometimes only as syntactic sugar (which would miss the > opportunity for semantic reform) -- yet without it getting the breathing > room it needs. > > Dave is working now in the > > http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:strawman > > space on the wiki. Don't throw stones, this is not in the harmony: namespace > for good reason. Constructive comments welcome. And I still owe the list a > story on wiki access that keeps Ecma happy and doesn't throw open the edit > wars doors. > > Among the new strawman pages, the following are relevant and (I hope) > helpful: > > http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:lambdas > http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:lexical_scope > http://wiki.ecmascript.org/doku.php?id=strawman:return_to_label I wasn't sure if there was going to be a day when I saw these exciting ideas as potential/maybe ideas that might/perhaps end up in ECMAScript. I'm going to cross my fingers and start holding my breath now. Peter _______________________________________________ Es-discuss mailing list Es-discuss@mozilla.org https://mail.mozilla.org/listinfo/es-discuss
