Re: Scheme pattern for retrieving data in objects

[David Kastrup]

Kieren MacMillan <kieren@kierenmacmillan.info> writes:

> Hi Han-Wen,
>
>> Over the years, I've become extremely wary of syntactic sugar: it adds
>> an extra barrier to usage/development because everyone not only has to
>> learn Scheme, they also have to learn the (lilypond specific) idioms
>> involved.
>
> I'm curious you say that, since my experience is precisely the
> opposite: I've had far better results "selling" Lilypond to people
> using syntactic sugar than basically anything else I can identify. The
> people I’ve "converted" all want to be able to type things like
>
>    \reverseMusic \foo
>
> rather than learning how to write the equivalent function in
> Scheme. In other words, syntactic sugar keeps them from learning
> Scheme as opposed to having to learn it.
>
> Am I missing something? Is my experience unique?

You are talking about different things.  Syntactic sugar says the same
thing but in a more cohesive manner.  That is not the same as assembling
dedicated functionality from suitable components.

Syntactic sugar saves clutter which is not the same as hiding internals.

-- 
David Kastrup