Explanation of macros; Haskell macros

[Dave Harris]

mike420 at ziplip.com () wrote (abridged):
> I keep hearing good (or at least interesting) things about Smalltalk.
> But back when I looked at it, I was really unimpressed by its 
> community. The mood is generally like "Yeah, Smalltalk is dead,
> let's finish the projects we are working on in Smalltalk and
> move on". At least we, Lispers, are militant and aim for world
> domination. This defeatism discouraged me from seriously studying 
> Smalltalk.

When was that? In recent years Smalltalk has acquired an ANSI standard, it 
has several important new implementations (Squeak, Dolphin, S#), was the 
birthplace of the Refactoring Browser and Extreme Programming. I'd say it 
was pretty vibrant.


> In addition to short LAMBDA (is it shorter than "\" ?), what
> interesting features does Smalltalk have that Lisp does *not* have?

I like it because of its concrete object model and syntax.

I realise Lisp lets you build just about any object model you want, but 
this is an area where the cutting down of possibilities is helpful 
(assuming Smalltalk matches what you want to do). 

I find Lisp syntax to be too austere. It gives me too few clues as to 
semantics. I believe Smalltalk is about the right balance between that 
austerity on the one hand, and the full-on "different syntax for every 
concept" of languages like C. (Actually I'd like just a leetle more syntax 
than what Smalltalk has, but I don't know how to add it without screwing 
it up.)

-- Dave Harris, Nottingham, UK