No macros in Python

[Russell Wallace]

On Mon, 16 Dec 2002 08:45:12 +0100, Laura Creighton <lac at strakt.com>
wrote:

>Writing your own Lisp Macro System is better than sex.  I _know_ -- 18 year
>old me turned down _lots_ of opportunities for sex to go hack on her
>macro system.  Thus if we introduce this to the language, I think that it
>is _inevitable_ that we will fragment the Python community into a
>plethora of mutually unintelligble dialects.  I don't want this.  Thus
>I don't want a macro facility in the language _because_ it would be so cool.

On the question of whether having potentially abusable features like
macros is good or bad, I think one either subscribes to the idea "the
language designer knows what's good for me better than I do, and
should force me to do the right thing whether I want to or not" or one
doesn't, and no amount of argument will convince either side to change
their mind; so I'll note that I'm in the latter school of thought on
the issue and leave it at that :)

However, I'm curious about this: just what was in your Lisp macro
system that made the resulting code incomprehensible even to
experienced Lisp programmers? Do you still have any of the code lying
around, or remember any examples?

-- 
"Mercy to the guilty is treachery to the innocent."
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