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

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Björn.

On Wed, Nov 08, 2023 at 17:00:06 +0200, Björn Bidar wrote:
> Emanuel Berg <incal@dataswamp.org> writes:

> > But how would this help the maintainers? Instead of
> > familiarizing themselves with `cl-incf', and all other
> > functions provided by cl-lib that are in use and people will
> > continue to use, they will have to learn the new functions
> > replacing them? So what difference will that make?

> It does sound more and more the fight for some kind of language purity
> to not use cl-lib. Removed from reality like Don Quixote.

That is verging on the offensively patronising, and I don't think it is
appropriate language for this mailing list.

Just take one look at this "reality" you're so supportive of: the
widespread use of cl-lib, not just in people's own projects, but
throughout the core of Emacs, has multiplied the size of Lisp language
part of Emacs by a factor of around 3.   This is a gross increase in
complexity for maintainers that is not justified by the slight increase
in facility that cl-lib (along with things like seq.el and oclosures)
gives.

Throughout this long discussion, this indiscriminate use of cl-lib has
been supported only by occasional contributers.  Those who actually
maintain other people's code, apart from (I think) Eli, Richard and
myself, have been conspicuously silent.  None of us three have favoured
such use of cl-lib.

Occasional contributors may be fascinated by cl-lib, and learn enough of
it to use random bits of it in their code.  The trouble is, each such
contributor uses a different piece of cl-lib, with the result that those
who end up maintaining it need to know a far greater part of it just to
cope.

This factor of 3 is, I believe, a significant barrier to new programmers
coming into Emacs; Elisp is just that much more difficult than it was in
the past.  And it isn't just for newcomers that it is more difficult.  I
spend a significant amount of debugging time having to look up doc
strings and manual pages for obscure cl-lib (etc.) functions.  This is
lost time, representing a diminution of my capacity to maintain Emacs.
I suspect it is similar for other maintainers.

That is the current reality.

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).