Gödel, Escher, Elisp: The Beauty of Macros

(chiply.dev)

32 points | by JNRowe 10 days ago ago

9 comments

  • meken 2 hours ago

    > To anticipate a common question: why couldn't my-unless be a function? Function arguments are evaluated eagerly, before the function ever sees them.

    Interesting, so if you’re using a lazy language then you don’t need a macro here and could write my-unless as a function.

  • kimi 2 hours ago

    Remember the golden rule of Lisp macros: don't write a macro.

  • thisisauserid an hour ago

    I always thought it odd that Penrose gets dropped from the Escher conversations.

  • KeenanKeenan 2 hours ago

    If macros can implement arbitrary language features then how come elisp has never built a type system?

    • BeetleB an hour ago

      I would expect you can.

      lexilambda created Typed Racket on top of Racket. https://github.com/racket/typed-racket

    • wk_end 2 hours ago
      • KeenanKeenan an hour ago

        Typed racket too, might I add. I just imagine static typing around stable core APIs would help users understand how eglot and vertico compare to prior art. The way I learned how the completion stack works was to ask claude to show me what the elisp entrypoints would look like if implemented in typescript. It's not because I'm unfamiliar with lisp, I'm not, it's just easier to reason with the world in terms of data structures and their contracts.