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From: jinx@zurich.ai.mit.edu (Guillermo J. Rozas)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: Scheme as an Algol-like, not Lisp-like, language
Message-ID: <JINX.91Mar2204854@chamarti.ai.mit.edu>
Date: 3 Mar 91 01:48:54 GMT
References: <1991Feb15.191259.20090@aero.org> <1991Feb15.223520.17267@Think.COM>
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	<PCG.91Feb23162955@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk> <4234@skye.ed.ac.uk>
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In-reply-to: jaffer@gerber.ai.mit.edu's message of 3 Mar 91 00:33:37 GMT

In article <13645@life.ai.mit.edu> jaffer@gerber.ai.mit.edu (Aubrey Jaffer) writes:

   Someone suggested that `while' should be added to Scheme.  To my mind
   `while' is not different enough from `do' to be useful:

   (while <CONDITIONAL> <CODE ...>)  ==>
   (do () ((not <CONDITIONAL>)) <CODE ...>)

+ is not different enough from - to be useful:

(define (+ x y)
  (- x (- 0 y)))

yet you wouldn't want to do away with it, right? :-)

The language should be flexible enough to adapt to the thinking of the
programmer, not the other way around.