Re: What's missing in ELisp that makes people want to use cl-lib?

[Po Lu]

João Távora <joaotavora@gmail.com> writes:

> It's converting a plist into an alist.  And I used it precisely
> an example of non-universal code, that is  nevertheless concise.
>
> No one asked you to "judge it".

You're arguing in favor of it, and to repudiate such arguments the
measure that is being used to compare it with other postulated
alternatives must also be applied to these alternatives, correct?

In view of the incidence of the word "conciseness" within both your
follow-ups, that is the measure in question.  I think the existence of a
minimum of one person who does not quite follow the code at hand is
enough to outweigh any advantages it might hold, when this is the
alternative in question:

(let ((list '(:a b :c d)) (other nil))
  (while list
    (push (cons (car list) (cadr list)) other)
    (setq list (cddr list)))
  (nreverse other))

Using cl-lib for this kind of job, and expecting others to understand
it, is like a philosopher upholding the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
as a universal cynosure for reasoning and exhorting laymen to hold their
thought to it.  Bizarrely enough, I have been subject to both these
kinds of exhortations.