> So far the arguments in favor of keywords like SRFI-177 are: > > - Performance > - Programming in the large > - Scripting Sorry, I was being unclear. To me, standardization is the most important argument. I don't personally care very much how the semantics are done (hygiene, no hygiene, or both; allow-other-keys supported or not; what kind of syntax to use). They main thing is that we pick some standard, any standard, for the most basic stuff. Programming in the large and scripting are mainly relevant because those are the most obvious situations where people don't have enough time or foresight to carefully design every detail of their program. So they need some kind of hack that's not too much of a hack. That's kind of a weird thing to put in a language, but all programs that grow beyond a certain size need to use some features like that; if they don't come from the language, they come from (slightly different, often incompatible) libraries. Then debates are had over which library to choose and how to make them interoperate. That's just the kind of debate that's ideal to have in a language design group, and to avoid in an application development project.
