A long series of posts

I was arguing recently that it was important for programs to have semantics. Would someone dispute this? Apparently so. Therefore, I started a series of Socratic arguments. I never finished it, but maybe I'll finish it here in my blog.

Let me start with something extremely simple:

(define (factorial x)
 (if (< x 2)
     1
     (* x (factorial (- x 1)))))

and I ask the question to my hypothetical students “What does this mean?”

Student A says “No computer program can ever have a meaning. Someone could redefine *, or shadow if, and make any answer incorrect.”

Student B says “I don't know, but the computer says ”

 (fact 0) => 1
 (fact 1) => 1
 (fact 2) => 2
 (fact 3) => 6
 (fact 4) => 24 ...

Student C says “It defines FACTORIAL as a recursive program that computes the factorial function for positive integer arguments.”

How do you grade these answers, and why?

Unbelievable

How's that Scheme working group doing?

• defmacro nostalgia? — check
• case sensitivity sensitivity? — check
• first-class environments? — check
• FEXPRs re-exhumed? — check

A Wacky Idea

All computer languages should come with a fully parenthesized API to their syntax tree.

The semantics of other languages are nasty enough. Having to deal with quirky syntax is just rubbing salt in the wound.

Furthermore, the language reader and pretty-printer should be break-out modules that can simply be imported and linked. I'm getting sick of writing parsers just because I can't trivially hijack an existing one without bringing in the entire compiler.

Wacky idea #2: A standalone syntax-rules preprocessor could be used on the parenthesized syntax tree. This would give the language a nice hygienic (lexically scoped) macro system with no work on the language implementor's part. (The preprocessor would have to know what the native binding forms are and how to distinguish identifiers from keywords.)