From ... From: Erik Naggum Subject: Re: Lisp & SICP Date: 2000/05/15 Message-ID: <3167404914296510@naggum.no>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 623722419 References: <391E9C25.94F5C377@uniserve.com> <8fo800$cgl$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <8fp3t6$b2r$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <3167393469185860@naggum.no> <39202cd5$0$207@nntp1.ba.best.com> mail-copies-to: never Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Complaints-To: newsmaster@eunet.no X-Trace: oslo-nntp.eunet.no 958416162 23783 195.0.192.66 (15 May 2000 18:42:42 GMT) Organization: Naggum Software; vox: +47 8800 8879; fax: +47 8800 8601; http://www.naggum.no User-Agent: Gnus/5.0803 (Gnus v5.8.3) Emacs/20.6 Mime-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Date: 15 May 2000 18:42:42 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp * Chuck Fry | Maybe I'm ignorant. It seems to me that Scheme has an implicit | funcall. To recap: Andrew Cooke said Scheme didn't need _apply_. That's bogus -- Scheme doesn't "need" funcall because of its "single namespace" mistake. However, the reduced need for funcall didn't arise because of the reduction of namespaces -- it makes sense to retain this mechanism even if you have only one namespace. I don't think an implicit funcall is anything but a great loss, and certainly do _not_ think it's a feature. I think it makes code harder to read and a lot messier by virtue of crowding _my_ brain's namespace (which matters more to me than the compiler's). Actually, I think the missing funcall is just one more of Scheme's many, many misguided shots at a pointless notion of "elegance by taking away". #:Erik -- If this is not what you expected, please alter your expectations.