Explanation of macros; Haskell macros

[Kenny Tilton]

Jesse Tov wrote:
> Peter Seibel <peter at javamonkey.com>:
> 
>>them. Now I don't know Haskell or ML so I'm also suffering from finite
>>knowledge. Maybe one day I'll have time to learn one of them for
>>myself and see if they really do offer better solutions.
> 
> 
> The existence of Template Haskell indicates to me that there are things
> people want to do with macros that aren't reasonably done in Haskell.  I
> don't even know if I've ever wanted to do these things, because people
> rarely miss language features that they don't know.

A language feature is not worth having unless it meets a need which 
exists independent of anyone thinking to create said language feature. 
If you follow links below and poke around the Cliki you can locate those 
folks who got to Lisp via the Greenspun route in some way shape or form, 
people who were trying to do Lisp, not knowing there was such a thing.

I once had a contract to develop a browser app that was going to have 
about twenty screens. They would all work the same, but on different 
views of the DB. COBOL does not have macros, but I sure as hell wasn't 
going to write one and clone it eighteen times.

COBOL /does/ have COPY REPLACING. They may not have intended for someone 
to copy an entire program splicing in different form names and RDB view 
names, but where there is a lazy programmer...

:)

kenny


> 
> Jesse

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