From ... Path: archiver1.google.com!news1.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.icl.net!newsfeed.fjserv.net!news.teledanmark.no!uninett.no!news-feed.ifi.uio.no!ifi.uio.no!not-for-mail From: Erik Naggum Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: macros vs HOFs (was: O'Caml) Date: 12 Sep 2002 20:44:52 +0000 Organization: Naggum Software, Oslo, Norway Lines: 17 Message-ID: <3240852292130093@naggum.no> References: <3D7CB8DF.8050108@pontos.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: maud.ifi.uio.no 1031863492 13680 129.240.64.16 (12 Sep 2002 20:44:52 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@ifi.uio.no NNTP-Posting-Date: 12 Sep 2002 20:44:52 GMT Mail-Copies-To: never User-Agent: Gnus/5.09 (Gnus v5.9.0) Emacs/21.2 Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.lisp:40504 * Gareth McCaughan | They are ugly so that your code can be beautiful. This is a frequently misunderstood point. A lot of programmers who get transfixed by some blinding elegance never understand that what they have to work with is elegant because a lot of the dirty details have been wiped under the carpet. They sort of get this requirement that from this point onward, /all/ code must be "elegant". I have come to believe that elegance, to be achieved where it did not previously exist, you must do a lot of hard, dirty work. The simpler and more elegant you want the abstraction to be, the more time and effort you must expend on its fundamentals and its implementation. -- Erik Naggum, Oslo, Norway Act from reason, and failure makes you rethink and study harder. Act from faith, and failure makes you blame someone and push harder.