As for the it/_ question: I hadn't noticed until writing my post that _ and it (and self in afn) were serving similar purposes; I don't really know which one I like more, though that's not something I care heavily about. (My feeling about the English-centricity problem is that if everything else in the language is already in English---if, each, and, etc.---then changing it to _ probably wouldn't make a huge difference.)
As for the function-naming issue: I also prefer the Scheme naming convention, though not for multiple-language reasons (I'm an American [mais je peux parler Français]); that's an aspect I hadn't thought of. (The a-predicate versus anaphoric thing is already annoying.) Internationalization of programming languages is a hard problem that I don't think anybody's tried to tackle, and I'm not sure how tractable it is---it would be interesting to see a language or framework which tried to explore that design space. The obvious approach is something like
(mac si (c v f) `(if ,c ,v ,f))
(= chaque each)
; etc.
The downside is that this only internationalizes the core; any library still has to support these synonyms or have a translator, and so I'm not sure how big the eventual gain is. (I think AppleScript had this once, but since applications didn't support this, that feature died.)
In my opinion (and I've barely used CL), loop is a brilliant piece of code because it's a great little DSL for iteration; at the same time, also having simpler alternatives, e.g.each, available is really handy because that way you don't need to know everything loop can do all the time.
> then changing it to _ probably wouldn't make a huge difference
I also don't think it would be a huge difference for non-english programmers, although it may be a little win. But for my case, I don't prefer "_" just because of that. I'd say, the main reason is that "_" is more easily recognized by my parser (aka brain) as a special variable than "it" because it is an uncommon glyph. "it" gets lost in the flow of the program.
> I'm an American [mais je peux parler Français]
Now, that is not common and that is cool. I mean, not that you know how to speak French, but that you know how to speak a foreign language.
Those who know no foreign language knows nothing of their mother tongue. -- Goethe
It's not a coincidence that Larry Wall (Perl creator) studied linguistics...
> that's an aspect I hadn't thought of
Well in this case I can go to sleep happy, knowing I made you aware of something new ;-)
> a-predicate versus anaphoric thing is already annoying.
Yes! When I realized 'acons & the like were predicates, well I thought 'afn was, too...
> loop is a brilliant piece of code because it's a great little DSL for iteration; at the same time, also having simpler alternatives, e.g. each, available is really handy
Totally agreed. 'loop is something great to have as a library or something, but if it's the only way you have to do basic iteration, well, it sucks IMO. Because in top of knowing CL you have to know the 'loop stuff, which is completely different. Gosh, writing this message I realize I don't even remember how to iterate over a list while printing its elements. But yes, 'loop is extremely powerful.
Anyway, thanks once again absz, your message was really interesting to read!
