Re: [Scheme-reports] Mutable Pairs

[Alaric Snell-Pym <alaric@x>]

On 06/14/10 08:32, David Rush wrote:
>     But *why* lump mutable data together with something as
>     fundamental as pairs?  Where's the "jewel-like"ness of that?
>
>
> Because Scheme allows mutability as a top-level entity without reference
> to a state monad. Its a foundational part of the design space.
>
>     If anything, this lumping *is* -- IMO -- an "attack on the core
>     nature of
>     Scheme"
>
>
> Haskell is over -> there.

I think Eli's point is being overextend here... he's not arguing for
making Scheme a pure language (he has spoken highly of mutable cells,
vectors, structures and set!), just for not making pairs mutable by default.

Perhaps I can summarise his argument ('tho he's welcome to tell me I
misrepresent him!) as "Let's make mutability more explicit, so that only
things we have requested mutability for can be mutated, to reduce the
chances of unexpected accidental mutation"?

That's a reasonable thing to discuss, even if we don't do it.

But, ah, can everyone please be a bit less emotive and "personal" about
this issue? Nobody's out to destroy Scheme here (unless we have
UNDERGROUND AGENTS from the RUBY/PERL/JAVA/PHP/INSERT-ENEMY-HERE
COMMUNITY! ;-) - just throwing out ideas on what might be best for it.
I, for one, take pains to suggest ideas that I think should be examined
by the community, even if I don't necessarily agree with them myself,
since I think that greater minds than I might come up with something
good from them. I'd hate to be the recipient of some of the language
I've seen here because of this!

ABS

--
Alaric Snell-Pym
http://www.snell-pym.org.uk/alaric/

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