From: "Mauricio Fernández" <batsman.geo@...>
Date: 2003-04-13T00:56:44+09:00
Subject: Re: The "!" and "?" characters.

On Sat, Apr 12, 2003 at 10:59:18PM +0900, Martin Weber wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 12, 2003 at 08:50:58PM +0900, Yukihiro Matsumoto wrote:
> > |By the way why not allow to define new operators, like in prolog and
> > |sml?
> > 
> > (a) it would make the parser hard to write, hard to maintain, and
> >     slow.
> > 
> > (b) it would make syntax vary program to program, which would make
> >     programs hard to read.
> > 
> > And (b) is also the reason _not_ to have macros in Ruby.
> 
> You're the chief but ... macros make it actually easier to read programs.
> Just think of cond in lisp. But ... you're the chief :)

Watch matz's presentation at LL2 for some real-life discussions on that :-)
It's available at http://www.bebear.net/ll2/LL2_Ruby.mov . 

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