

What is boilerplate? and why is Lisp so good at reducing it? - morphir

What exactly is boilerplate? and why is Lisp so good at reducing it?
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hxa7241
Boilerplate is an implicit abstraction: recognisable generality, but lacking a
coded mechanism.

These could always be manually transformed to fit standard abstractions, such
as functions or classes. But Lisp's macro facility instead allows them to be
captured more 'directly'.

Now, whether fewer standardised abstractions is better/worse than more various
tailored abstractions, is a deeper question . . .

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wgj
This wikipedia entry is a decent introduction, discussing pros and cons of
repetition-reducing abstractions (DRY) in a language-independent way.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dont_repeat_yourself>

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morphir
your link doesn't work. Try this one instead.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_repeat_yourself> I was not aware there
was a term for this. Also called DIE (Duplication is Evil).

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wgj
Thanks for the updated link. Mine was a cut/paste from the Chrome address bar.
A bug maybe.

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morphir
I initially thought recursion where less cpu intensive than traditional for-
loops. Is this even true?

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chromatic
No one can answer that question accurately without discussing specific
implementations of specific programming languages.

