[plt-dev] some Racket proposals & implementation

While I agree with your sentiment -- not changing so much right now --
I disagree with the overall evaluation. I think

  (define-struct ufo moving-object (#posn p #vel (velocity 0 0)))

very appealing per se, also with the even shorter syntax of using just
define. The regularity of having both function headers and struct  
headers
use the same grammar is great. (It may even pacify the grumpy old men of
Scheme standards.) I just don't think we're ready for it now if we want
lots of files to start with #lang racket.

-- Matthias





On Apr 5, 2010, at 10:21 AM, Robby Findler wrote:

> I dislike this change. Brainfuck is very lightweight language too (by
> the measures of lightweightness I've seen here recently), lets not
> forget.
>
> In more politic words, it seems like making function definitions and
> structure definitions look so similar to each other is just asking
> Racket programmers to get confused.
>
> Robby
>
> On Mon, Apr 5, 2010 at 9:18 AM, Matthias Felleisen <matthias at ccs.neu.edu 
> > wrote:
>>
>> On Apr 4, 2010, at 10:37 PM, Eli Barzilay wrote:
>>
>>> On Apr  4, Matthias Felleisen wrote:
>>>>
>>>> On Apr 3, 2010, at 8:19 PM, Matthew Flatt wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I like
>>>>>  (define-struct (a x y) #:super b)
>>>>> much better than the current
>>>>>  (define-struct (a b) (x y))
>>>>> but I'm not sure that it's worth changing.
>>>>
>>>> The issue I brought up in Boston was the 'heaviness' of the looks  
>>>> of
>>>> our code, which to some extent is caused by long names. Going from
>>>> (make-a 0 1) to (a 0 1) is a good weight loss. The above seems to
>>>> call for trouble for a minor advantage.
>>>
>>> I think that there *is* some weight loss here too -- one that is
>>> similar to loss of moving from `mzlib/kw' to the current syntax.
>>> Specifically, there's a whole bunch of struct features that you get
>>> with no need to remember anything more than "use `define-struct'
>>> instead of `struct'".  It's also the same kind of win as "use `for/ 
>>> *'
>>> instead of `let'" that makes the current iterators so good (as  
>>> opposed
>>> to the srfi or the swindle or the CL syntaxes).
>>
>>
>> Yes, using a plain function header to specify structures (without  
>> body)
>> is very nice because you get all these things (keywords,  
>> initialization)
>> for free. But then we're back to the balance of change vs getting  
>> Racket
>> out. -- Matthias
>>
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