Re: [stack] sweetening concatenative syntax

On Mar 6, 2008, at 12:22 PM, William Tanksley, Jr wrote:

>> I'm not convinced concatenativity offers a huge advantage in
>> factoring.
>
> Sure it does! The referential transparency alone is worth the price of
> admission -- the famous "extract method" refactoring (considered by
> many to be the first indication of "true" refactoring support in a
> tool) is merely a cut-and-paste in any editor.

Indeed, although this partially breaks down in the presence of  
modules. Types also complicate things. For example, you can't factor  
out the 'dup i' in '[swap] dup i' unless your system has higher-rank  
polymorphism or equi-recursive types.

>> If a syntax that is non-concatenative makes it any easier to use any
>> of the other means of factoring, then it seems to me it's worth
>> considering.
>
> At this point in our understanding of concatenative languages, this is
> a pure cop-out.

Fair enough.

> Yes, we don't have a concatenative Haskell yet -- but give us time.

I'm working on it!

- John