George <greerga@CIRCLEMUD.ORG> writes:
> >> I'm 'so rabidly against change' because 3.0 isn't supposed to have major
> >> design changes. When we finally move on to further versions, people can
> >> submit whatever they like to be considered for inclusion. That includes
> >> things you write, I write, and anyone else. And on the contrary, I've
> >> never insulted you personally.
>
> That was in the context of the bpl13 patch, which is 3.0.
I never put it into such a context. I don't see where you feel that
it was put into that context -- it certainly wasn't put there by me,
and wasn't there at the beginning of the thread.
> >Your tone from the beginning has been adversarial, confrontational, at
> >times demeaning, and very closed minded. I am sorry if you've fealt
>
> As soon as you stop your close-minded 'macros are evil, functions are god',
> we can get somewhere. :)
Please do not attribute things to me that I have not said. I have
stated, on several occasions, that there are definitely proper uses
for macros. My point is that Circle abuses them as shortcuts. 95% of
Circle macros would work perfectly as functions (or a pair of
functions, set and get). Yes, this would require changes to a fair
amount of code. But it could all be done inside of an afternoon, if
that long, with the proper tools (sed, emacs, maybe perl if
necessary). The writing of the functions would also perhaps take an
afternoon, depending on how much detail and error verification is put
in on the first pass.
> Even I admit that macros are not everything and some macros in CircleMUD
> should be functions. You, however, want nothing to do with any macro at
> all. That has been the main point of this debate. I'm not against you, I'm
> actually glad there was a debate for once, it's just too bad I was up
> against Andrew's brother.
That is not true, nor have I ever said such a thing. The main point
of this debate has been the proper choice of whether some things
should be macros or functions. There have been side debates about
optimization, inlining, how Circle should fit into the scheme of
things, and other smaller topics. But this branch of my original
debate has always been about using macros where they are needed, and
functions when they suffice.
A very minimal conversion from macros to functions (keeping the same
names, just turning them into functions, and writing set statements)
would take probably one afternoon. It isn't that big of a task.
However, this doesn't include REMOVE_FROM_LIST -- something that
replacing will take quite a bit longer.
Macros are very convenient. They simplify the writing of code. But
it is time to go back and see what parts of the code need to be gone
over in an attempt to restructure, repair, and improve past design
issues. Macros are included in this, but if you will recall my
original post, they were only one topic out of six or seven.
--
James Turner turnerjh@xtn.net
http://www.vuse.vanderbilt.edu/~turnerj1/
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