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From: ericco@stew.ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric C. Olson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: Lisp history
Message-ID: <1990Sep19.173527.23489@agate.berkeley.edu>
Date: 19 Sep 90 17:35:27 GMT
References: <19900919155917.7.MOON@KENNETH-WILLIAMS.SCRC.Symbolics.COM>
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Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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In article <19900919155917.7.MOON@KENNETH-WILLIAMS.SCRC.Symbolics.COM> Moon@STONY-BROOK.SCRC.SYMBOLICS.COM ("David A. Moon") writes:
>It's also true that with the advent of richer data structures,
>programmers need to be advised to choose the appropriate data structure
>for a task rather than always using linked lists for everything.  I
>certainly can't see the harm in that.

I can.  I think that using "appropriate" data structures makes code
faster, but it also reduces that generality of the code.  As someone
once said, its better to have 90 programs that operate on one data
structure than 90 programs that operate on 90 data structures.  I
think that using an array where a list will do is essentially hand
compiling code.  I'd rather have a compiler that would do this for me.

I realize that what I'm suggesting is not feasible given the current
state of the art compilers -- but it is what I want.

Eric

Eric
ericco@ssl.berkeley.edu