Re: Instead of pcase

[Dmitry Gutov]

On 22/11/2023 04:59, Richard Stallman wrote:
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>
>    > In Lisps, most of the complexity simply moved to standard library
>    > (and/or other libraries as well).
>
> This seems to presume a principle of "conservation of complexity", but
> that is not so.

Not exactly. I just tried to explain that the notion of Lisp having 
"simple" syntax doesn't mean that everything about it can or should be 
just as simple.

> Complexity doesn't simply "move".  For example, pcase
> replicates (with differences) complexity that already existed in
> various Lisp functions and constructs.

Indeed. The goal there (and in such cases in general) is to concentrate 
specific bits of complexity inside advanced named constructs (functions 
or macros) that are designed in a way that reduces the total complexity 
in the code which uses them. Then you (roughly) only need to understand 
the construct (which is a fixed amount of complexity) and then every 
piece of code using it (as long as it's used appropriately) will incur 
lower mental overhead than if it were implemented using just the basic 
primitives. Reducing the total effort required to understand a series of 
such programs.