[plt-scheme] Okay, this is ugly

On Feb 18, 2006, at 09:56, Chongkai Zhu wrote:
> [GW env-get-binding] version is ugly because you are thinking in C  
> (or some similar ugly language).
> I think that real Scheme code can't be ugly.

Now that's a proclamation!  I agree with the sentiment and goal, but  
I thought, "Wait, I know I've seen some ugly Lisp and Scheme."

I thought, "If I can find something ugly in the best collection of  
Scheme code I know, then [unfortunately] that would prove that Scheme  
can be ugly."  Risking blasphemy, I went to the closest place of  
worship (collects/ under my PLT installation) and did:
   find . -type f | xargs ls -l | egrep '(\.ss|\.scm)$' | sort -rn +4

and started poking around big files.  I was surprised, even in the  
big files, there was a sense of organization.  The only ugliness  
seemed to be where Scheme had to interface with other software,  
languages or standards that were themselves ugly.

The only thing I didn't like was occasional deeply nested test  
conditions in real-world code, which seem to afflict every language,  
even our favorite.

Geoffrey
--
Geoffrey S. Knauth | http://knauth.org/gsk