Why I love Smalltalk

Post by more_original » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 11:16 AM UTC

redxaxder wrote: post #28

gjm11 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's fair. Being able to implement if doesn't mean that the entire remainder of the system is built without any conditional instructions anywhere in its implementation. (The point, after all, isn't some sort of mystical purity; it's that if you can implement if then you can probably also implement whatever other control structures you happen to fancy. Which you can.)

To implement a usable if , you need to tie it to some form of logical branching. Haskell can tie it to pattern matches. C compiles them to conditional jumps in asm. The asm jump instructions are implemented in hardware. The meat of the if definition lies in how you tie it to whatever form of conditional behavior your language has. This is missing from the article. Smalltalk (presumably) has a form of logical branchin…

  abstract class Bool {
    void ifTrue(Runnable f, Runnable g); 
  }

  class True extends Bool {
    void ifTrue(Function f, Function g) {
      f.run();
    }
  }

  class False extends Bool {
    void ifTrue(Function f, Function g) {
      g.run();
    }
  }

  Bool b;

  b.ifTrue(new Runnable() {
      public void run() {
         System.out.println("It's true!");
      }
    }
  , new Runnable() {
      public void run() {
         System.out.println("Not true!");
      }
    }
  );

Post by theclay » Sat, Jul 30, 2011, 6:54 PM UTC

Xurinos wrote: post #30

theclay wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Since you are hung up on "objective analysis," what objective evidence do you have that this claim is true? In any case, here is an objective problem: Common Lisp does not include a standard for regular expressions. That isn't anecdotal and it isn't misplaced blame and it isn't an unnamed idiosyncrasy. It's a failure within the CL standard to include one of the most powerful tools around for text processing--a tool t…

I am no Lisp expert by a longshot, but when I want regular expressions, I use this library: http://www.cliki.net/CL-PPCRE (available for easy install via quicklisp) Since I like to pick on Perl... This library's logic is, as it happens, allegedly faster than Perl's regular expressions. That probably is not difficult to do, since Perl is interpreted, whereas most CL implementations are a both interpreted and compiled:…

Post by Xurinos » Sun, Jul 31, 2011, 6:03 PM UTC

theclay wrote: post #36

Xurinos wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am no Lisp expert by a longshot, but when I want regular expressions, I use this library: http://www.cliki.net/CL-PPCRE (available for easy install via quicklisp) Since I like to pick on Perl... This library's logic is, as it happens, allegedly faster than Perl's regular expressions. That probably is not difficult to do, since Perl is interpreted, whereas most CL implementations are a both interpreted and compiled:…

I'm sorry, but this doesn't address what I said. I know the lisp community stands behind Edi Weitz and I respect him, but compared to Python's "Batteries Included" or Perl's standard regular expression library, your solution is problematic. Consider: Weitz's library is just one of five possible regular expression libraries listed on Cliki! Why did you choose his? Weitz's library isn't even the top choice! Are the oth…