On 26 Sep 2010, at 03:33, Kazimir Majorinc wrote:
On 26.9.2010 2:09, Pascal Costanza wrote:
untestable and vague idea at best. The fact is that the problems with eval are well known and well described, both in literature and in practice. It's not necessary to discuss them in this forum, which is about professional uses of Common Lisp. I don't consider this a professional topic, because aside from toy examples, using eval most certainly doesn't simplify things, but makes things more complicated in the long run.
Pascal and others,
Moderator politely proposed that I do not continue sub-discussion on eval in this thread. If you have some references of the literature you mentioned here, please post me privately, off this list.
Good tutorials on Common Lisp (and probably Scheme) should discuss the issues with eval and why to avoid it. From a scientific perspective, the literature on reflection and macro programming is relevant, such as the papers that can be found at http://library.readscheme.org/
I'm happy to discuss the topic in a public forum, but not in private. comp.lang.lisp seems appropriate to me.
Best, Pascal