From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2004-08-03T09:51:34+09:00
Subject: Re: Macros in Ruby

In article <410EC9A6.5010107@neurogami.com>,
James Britt  <jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com> wrote:
>Jesse Jones wrote:
>  >
>> Banning a feature because it can be misused is a pretty weak rationale.
>
>I tend to agree on this, preferring an enabling language to a B&D 
>language.  Ruby already gives folks plenty of tools for making code 
>unreadable.  I think most people would use macros to do the opposite: 
>encapsulate some abstraction to make code cleaner.
>
>David Alan Black mentioned macros as (possibly) a facility for 
>introducing arbitrary syntax.  I'm no Lisper, but no examples I've seen 
>of Lisp macros suggest that this is what goes on.  I do not think you 
>can use Lisp macros to get a Lisp interpreter to under truly arbitrary code.
>
>But, even supposing one could, I believe the Darwinian forces in a 
>development community would prevent abuse of macros from becoming prevalent.
>

Agreed.

While Matz may have 'banned' macros from the core language, that doesn't 
mean that if someone comes up with a way to do LISP-like macros 
implemented in an external module, (that could be downloaded 
from the RAA for example) that Matz would ban the module.  He probably 
would never consider bundling it with the Ruby distribution, of course, 
but that doesn't mean it would be 'banned'.  

If such a module did ever become available those who would be interested 
in such things would use it and those who were not interested would 
ignore it.

It's kind of like how the static typing advocates occasionally come up 
with some code for emulating static typing in Ruby (and you can probably 
find some on the RAA) while most of us think that such things are 
ill-advised, no one is stopping the advocates of such things from using 
it.

Phil