The Epigram Programming Language

Thorsten Altenkirch | 18 Nov 2004 12:12

Re: Things amongst others


> So one day  we'll see the Epimacs?  By the way, as the  success of Emacs
> shows editors are  best written in languages with  dynamic scoping. Make
> shure Epigram has this feature.

That's a bit of a short-cut conclusion.

Dynamic scoping achieves the right thing the wrong way. We shouldn't abuse variable binding
to model access models to a state. Indeed Epimacs should be written in Epigram, what else?

T.
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-- 
Dr. Thorsten Altenkirch		   phone : (+44) (0)115 84 66516
Lecturer			   http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~txa/
School of Computer Science & IT	   University of Nottingham

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Sebastian Hanowski | 19 Nov 2004 09:33

dynamic scope (was: Re: Things amongst others)

* Thorsten Altenkirch [2004-11-18 18:27]:
> > So one  day we'll  see the Epimacs?  By the way,  as the  success of
> > Emacs  shows editors  are  best written  in  languages with  dynamic
> > scoping. Make shure Epigram has this feature.
> 
> That's a bit of a short-cut conclusion.

http://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/emacs-paper.html#SEC17

       "Dynamic  scope is  useful. Consider  the function  Edit Picture,
       which  is  used  to  change certain  editing  commands  slightly,
       temporarily, so  that they are  more convenient for  editing text
       which is arranged into two-dimensional pictures."

Sounds like Emacs was predetermined to edit Epigram code :)

> Dynamic scoping achieves  the right thing the wrong  way. 

And   yet   is  appreciated   by   some   people,  because   it   trades
con(n)o(r)tational for denotational semantics.

s~