On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 11:00 AM, Teemu Likonen <tliko...@iki.fi> wrote: > * 2011-04-12T10:27:55+10:00 * James Mills wrote: >> On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 9:17 AM, zildjohn01 <zildjoh...@gmail.com> wrote: >>> This is an idea I've had bouncing around in my head for a long time >>> now. I propose the following syntax: >> >> Maybe this is more appropriare for the python-ideas list ? >> >>> return? expr >> >> This syntax does not fit well within python ideology. > > I'm a simple Lisp guy who wonders if it is be possible to add some kind > of macros to the language. Then features like this could be added by > anybody. Lisp people do this all the time and there is no need for > feature requests or any discussions.
I think Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw's comments on open-world sandbox video games (of all things) have a lot of applicability to why allowing full-on macros can be a bad idea. Paraphrasing liberally from his review of Far Cry 2: "Letting the [programmer] create their own [language constructs is] always done at the expense of proper [orthogonality, elegance, and coherence]. Maybe sometimes I don't want to create my own [programming language] experience. Maybe I want to have an experience that's been carefully crafted by professional [language] designers and [architects]. But [a] delusion has arisen that absolutely anyone can contribute something valid, regardless of qualifications. In TV news for example, you'll often see them pause to hear the opinion of a seventy-five-year-old housebound racist from Lemington. And now you get [languages] like [Lisp] that rely heavily on user-made [language constructs]. Which I prophesise doom for, because most people are not [language] designers, and you're just going to end up with oceans of slurry, as indeed we have. It's like giving someone a stack of paper and a [pen] and claiming that that's as good as the latest [New York Times] bestseller." IOW, a language is usually better for having such discussions and having a fairly coherent worldview enforced by the existence of a managing authority. Cheers, Chris -- http://blog.rebertia.com -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list