On Mon, 24 Oct 2011, Alex Shinn wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 23, 2011 at 5:04 PM, Andre van Tonder <andre@het.brown.edu> wrote:
>>
>> Maybe for a virgin programmer, but they don't make things clearer to someone
>> who is used to the C*R deconstructors (e.g., anyone familiar with Scheme or
>
> Names matter.  New programmers, and people coming from
> other languages matter.  All else being equal to experienced
> Schemers, we should pick what makes the most sense for
> others.

All else is not equal to experienced Schemers.
>
>> LISP).  Anyone who has programmed macros in this style knows that every
>> additional argument in the descent simply needs another D, etc.
>> SECOND, THIRD, LIST-TAIL, etc., very much lack the elegance and conciseness
>> of the C*R notation.  For example, should the argument of LIST-TAIL should
>> be 3 or 4?
>
> So you're saying you can count the number of d's faster
> than you can read the character 3 or 4?

No, but should it be 3 or 4?  Does list-tail do the cut before or after the n-th
argument?  Does the count start at 0 or 1?  I can never remember this because
nothing about it is obvious.  CDDDR is obvious.

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