[plt-scheme] Re: servlets and stuff

At Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:42:50 -0400, Matthias Felleisen wrote:
> 
> On Oct 13, 2005, at 8:06 PM, Paul A. Steckler wrote:
> 
> >>> Language levels are modes, and modes should be
> >>> deprecated.  But if you've gotta have 'em, make
> >>> 'em obvious.
> >>
> >> In what sense are they modes?
> >
> > They're modes in that they affect the entire operation
> > of the program.  Think of language editing modes in
> > emacs; language levels have even more pervasive effects.
> >
> > If I edit a Scheme program in fundamental mode, I get
> > funny indenting behavior.  That why it's useful that
> > emacs displays its editing modes in the status bar.
> 
> Semantically -- and soon in DrScheme -- a language level is a
> module with a non-mzscheme language. In that case, the behavior
> is uniform, except that the require specs assign new/improved
> meaning to certain expressions. That'll be true at the Scheme
> level. I don't think this is a mode, unless all meaning
> changing import statements in ML are modes, too.

Well, the Java teaching languages will be modal, even in the module
world, until we get reader issues figured out (and maybe even
afterwards, I'm not sure).

Robby