No macros in Python

[Laura Creighton]

> 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 :)

Does it go down any better this way?  'The language designer does not 
know better than I do, but he does know better than Laura Creighton, 
aged 18, arrogant as Satan and whose code I am likely to maintain?'

> 
> 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?

I don't have any lying around, but the problem was that every floor invented
its own particular syntax for doing things like Discrete Fast Fourier 
Transforms.  The Astronomers, lucky souls, had an array processor which
they could use, and we didn't. We made the code resemble the hardware,
a lot, because we thought the hardware was cool.   By the time a department 
of Physicists gets done with any language, in the 1970s at any rate, it all 
looks like FORTRAN anyway.  Lispers from the AI community who shared an
office with me held their noses ....

Laura