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Ian Bicking: The challenge of metaprogrammingSo I think it's really important that we approach metaprogramming with caution. I think Guido has been right to resist macros. Not because they are necessarily wrong, but because we haven't yet figured out how to do them right. And maybe we never will, maybe source code simply isn't the right level for abstractions. I think it's good that Python doesn't do tail-call elimination; it seems like a nice feature, but in subtle ways it makes the language harder. And I think continuations could lead to bad things. There are wrong paths on the road to higher-level programming. (Though in some ways I also feel the opposite: tell us not to shoot ourselves in the foot, and expect us to listen, don't assume we'll abuse every feature that exists; there's always a tension in these design choices.) This deserves more attention than I can give it right now, but I am sure others here will want to comment. By Ehud Lamm at 2005-01-07 20:21 | Meta-Programming | Python | Software Engineering | other blogs | 31090 reads
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