Explanation of macros; Haskell macros

[James A. Robertson]

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On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 18:40:51 -0800 (PST), mike420 at ziplip.com wrote:

>{newsgroup list trimmed}
>
>>> "Anton van Straaten" <anton at appsolutions.com> writes:
>> 
>>>>Yes, but the point is that with a concise syntax for lambda, entire
>>>>classes of macros can become unnecessary. That's how Smalltalk
>>>>handles 'if', for example - no macros or special forms needed.
>
>I keep hearing good (or at least interesting) things about Smalltalk.
>But back when I looked at it, I was really unimpressed by its 
>community. The mood is generally like "Yeah, Smalltalk is dead,
>let's finish the projects we are working on in Smalltalk and
>move on". At least we, Lispers, are militant and aim for world
>domination. This defeatism discouraged me from seriously studying 
>Smalltalk. In addition to short LAMBDA (is it shorter than "\" ?),
>what interesting features does Smalltalk have that Lisp does *not* 
>have?
>
>By the way, you can have short LAMBDA in Lisp too:
>
>(defmacro \(&rest rest) `(lambda , at rest))

<Talk Small and Carry a Big Class Library>
James Robertson, Product Manager, Cincom Smalltalk
http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/blog/blogView