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000044_icon-group-sender _Tue Jan 26 20:56:15 1993.msg
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Received: by cheltenham.cs.arizona.edu; Wed, 27 Jan 1993 05:11:41 MST
Path: ucbvax!agate!doc.ic.ac.uk!uknet!edcastle!eddie
From: eddie@castle.ed.ac.uk (Eddie Corns)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.icon
Subject: Re: Rremoving entab/detab from Icon
Message-Id: <30836@castle.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 26 Jan 93 20:56:15 GMT
References: <556329@MTS.cc.Wayne.edu>
Organization: Edinburgh University
Lines: 19
Apparently-To: icon-group@cs.arizona.edu
Status: R
Errors-To: icon-group-errors@cs.arizona.edu
Surely the best person to decide whether a feature should be in the library or
the language itself should be the end user. Can we not think up some scheme
whereby those who don't need the overheads or whatever of unwanted features
can remove them. Things like entab and friends could be supplied as part of a
standard library and also in the language. If some way of removing them from
the language (or conversely building extra functions into the language) could
be found then we have the best of all possible worlds. Just a thought.
This is similar to debates like whether langauages should support variable
numbers of arguments. Those of us who find them useful say yes but others
complain that the overheads are too high. But of course those who don't want
them don't use them and hence occur no overheads and the rest of us put up
with the extra overheads when we feel they are useful. Should we have strong
or weak typing? -- let the user decide, add more information into a language to
give the user the control _they_ need. "The customer is always right." Just
my opinion, feel free to disregard it.
Eddie