Matthias Felleisen <xxxxxx@cs.rice.edu> writes:

> I am sorry to see that there is such a huge misunderstanding in our own
> community.

Here we go again.  Do they teach condescending at Rice?

> 1. Levels of programmers aside, set! and set-field-of-something!  are two
>    different concepts:

Could you save pointing out the obvious to your beginning students,
instead of to someone who has been in the programming-languages field
as long as you have or longer?

>    The idea of reifying the environment and introducing an invalid modifier
>    on it doesn't change this. It only emphasizes it.

At least for top-level environments, the two forms are equivalent.

>    If it weren't for set!, Scheme would be a perfect data-oriented language
>    on top of mathematics (and thus mathematical reasoning).

And pray how is set! different from set-field-of-something! in this respect?
--
	--Per Bothner
xxxxxx@bothner.com   http://www.bothner.com/~per/