🚀 go-pugleaf

RetroBBS NetNews Server

Inspired by RockSolid Light RIP Retro Guy

Article View: comp.lang.misc
Article #3343

Re: The search for heterogeneous lists is still on!

#3343
From: Darren New
Date: Tue, 02 Apr 1991 22:34
28 lines
1856 bytes
In article <167:Mar3121:32:0891@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>Does anyone have an example of a heterogeneous list---something beyond
>unions and callback functions---used in a real program?

What about Pascal's WRITELN function?  Please separate what the language
defines from the compiler's implementation of that functionality.

An analogy:

"Does anyone have an example of a recursive call -- something beyond
pushing arguments and return addresses on stacks -- used in a real program?"

Do you see the problem?  How can you possibly answer that?  How do you
answer when I say "Well, with a suitable preprocessor, you can put
recursion on top of a non-recursive language, so its all syntactic
sugar."

The syntactic sugar is what makes it work. *Everything* is syntactic
sugar for machine language. We are discussing what syntactic sugar is
good and bad and worthwhile and not.  To repeatedly say that it *is*
just syntactic sugar seems to miss the point and certainly fails to
communicate any valuable information.
	  -- Darren
-- 
--- Darren New --- Grad Student --- CIS --- Univ. of Delaware ---
----- Network Protocols, Graphics, Programming Languages, FDTs -----
  +=+=+ My time is very valuable, but unfortunately only to me +=+=+
+ When you drive screws with a hammer, screwdrivers are unrecognisable +
Technical Details
Message-ID: <49605@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!udel!ee.udel.edu
References: <167:Mar3121:32:0891@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>

Show Full Headers
Complete Article Headers
Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wuarchive!udel!ee.udel.edu
From: new@ee.udel.edu (Darren New)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: The search for heterogeneous lists is still on!
Message-ID: <49605@nigel.ee.udel.edu>
Date: 2 Apr 91 22:34:32 GMT
References: <167:Mar3121:32:0891@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Sender: usenet@ee.udel.edu
Organization: University of Delaware
Lines: 28
Nntp-Posting-Host: nigel.ee.udel.edu