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Date:Mon May 23 19:06:16 1997 
Subject:Re: OOP and The future of POP-11 
From:Jonathan Cunningham 
Volume-ID:970523.03 

In article <5lpr1s$4u9@percy.cs.bham.ac.uk>,
pop@roo.cs.umass.edu (Robin Popplestone) wrote:

>[2] One advantage of a defined abstract syntax a la Lisp is that it
>supports better, more principled, interaction of macros. It's improved even
>more if aspects of the compile-time environment are available, most
>especially signatures. I think that there are two classes of "macro":

I commented on macros in my (long) reply to aaron's post.

One feature I regard as good in a programming language is that the
order of compiling the source files should not matter. Neither pop11
nor lisp has this property, because of macros (and syntax procedures
in pop11).

This is an unnecessary failing: the compiler should record where symbols
are used, and if one of them is redefined as a macro it should recompile
the corresponding file (procedure or whatever) - along with providing
copious
warning messages.

Jonathan