From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2004-08-03T13:45:38+09:00
Subject: Re: Macros in Ruby

Phil Tomson wrote:
> In article <410EC9A6.5010107@neurogami.com>,
> James Britt  <jamesUNDERBARb@neurogami.com> wrote:
> 
...

>>
>>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.

Oh, nice move.  Associating Lisp-style macros with static typing.

I curse you, Phil Tomson!

James

:)