Re: seq.el and the complexity of Emacs Lisp.

[Emanuel Berg]

Harald Judt wrote:

> My response was targeted more at the general denial to code
> changes, not about this discussion about cl-lib.
> Your assumption that every change needs to be driven by
> benefit seems a bit short-sighted to me. It is probably good
> enough when you want to build something fast without having
> to care about it much later. Maybe it holds when you lack
> time because then not wasting time is a priority. But if you
> want to build something for long-term use, it might not be
> an optimal solution. Having to depend on immediate benefits
> to change anything also loses importance when time is not
> that much of a priority.

Well, now we are getting into the whole "revolution vs
evolution" discussion.

It is true that you can't expect to achieve something truly
original and great by endlessly piling up very small
incremental gains. But the great leaps are made more easily if
you have those incremental gains already.

And it is often indicative that a great leap is truly great,
if the way to it are big and small incremental gains.

> If cl-lib is huge, then one should ask, why has it grown
> that huge? Is it just a badly documented one-pot of several
> ideas thrown together instead of someone doing a library
> using careful planning? Wouldn't it have been better then to
> replace those functions with something better? Could the
> situation be improved by revising the cl-lib documentation,
> or splitting up the library and progressively replacing it
> with something better?

I think a lot of people have had a very positive experience
from it, and this is the reason for its proliferation.

But of course, incremental gains and great leaps are welcome
there as well :)

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