Random comments and long memories

[John (_You_ hide, they seek.) Mackin <john@civil.su.oz.au>]

You know, I knew Byron had said this.  And how about that for a coincidence!
He said it exactly a year ago today!

    From: Byron Rakitzis <byron@archone.tamu.edu>
    To: bk@analytikerna.se, rc@archone.tamu.edu
    Subject: rc code as arguments
    Message-Id: <91Oct3.113018cdt.18896@archone.tamu.edu>
    Date: Thu, 3 Oct 1991 11:30:06 -0500

    This is all very well, but I was hoping not to have to write the Lisp Shell.

Well Byron, looks like your hope was suitably dashed :):):)!

The more things that are manipulable in the language as first-class
objects, the smaller and cleaner the set of primitives can be, and
the more flexible the system gets.  es already seems to have first-class
closures; I'd like to wish for first-class environments (for EVAL)
and continuations (call-with-current-continuation).  Yes, I _am_
serious.  I'm sure you appreciate what a huge infrastructure of
useful Scheme code could be easily translated into es if we had
this (mechanically translated I think, once simultaneous assignment
arrives).  "catch" and "throw" be buggered, use the Scheme version
of dynamic-wind!!!!

OK,
John.