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

[Sebastián Monía]

Richard Stallman <rms@gnu.org> writes:

> Boy that is hard to understand.  I suggest we rewrite those cl-loop calls
> into ordinary Lisp, avoiding use of cl-loop.

I find that loop very readable. I am not an expert Lisper. Beginner at
CL, maybe mid-level if being generous. I did write a couple Emacs
packages.

I have been following this thread somewhat closely. My opinion maybe
isn't worth much because I am not a regular contributor. But maybe it
helps as one of the angles discussed earlier was related to the size of
Elisp and complexity for newcomers.

1. This kind of thread is more "scary" to potential Emacs contributors
than any degree of complexity in cl-lib. I can confirm that.

2. There's a lot of vague arguments for and against the library that, as
an semi-outsider, read more like stylistic preference. Sometimes
familiarity, or lack of it. Few objective reasons for/against.

3. Anyone interested in writing code for Emacs has to make the leap to a
Lisp (elisp, in this case) which is already quite alien to a large
population. For non-programmers, the problem is indistinguishable from
learning any other language. Even for most people familiar with software
development, cl-lib is the least of their difficulties.

I hope that was in some way helpful.
Thank you,
Sebastián