Re: something to chat about, lisp and Mathematica for list processing.

rjf wrote:
The fact is that Lisp macros are important tools for intermediate and
advanced Lisp programmers who use macros to facilitate the alteration
of the programs qua trees into other programs. It is used, for
example, to aid in abstraction, information hiding, building or
extending languages on top of Lisp, and other purposes, some not so
great (e.g. premature optimizations). I have not seen this done in
Mathematica. I can imagine people trying to do such things, by
defining programs by f[x_]= .... rather than f[x_]:= ..... But I
have not seen this.

Have a look at some of the DSLs available for Mathematica, such as the ones
for Feynman diagrams, combinatorics and graph theory. Many of these go
beyond macro-capabilities to provide customised typesetting and editing.

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
The OCaml Journal
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_journal/?usenet
.