alt Hacker NewsWhat makes this a desirable feature? From the perspective where local reasoning is the most desirable property a language can have, how does homoiconicity support that?
I honestly am curious. I've seen a few examples presented for it, but they always seem like bad software engineering to me. Where's an example that does something in a cleaner way than alternatives present in other languages while remaining compatible with local reasoning?
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> From the perspective where local reasoning is the most desirable property a language can have
That's a perspective. If you're looking for a low-level language, then Scheme isn't it. (Forget iconicity - Scheme is garbage-collected. And supports continuations!)
If you don't program in machine code - which would maximize local reasoning - then you must know the language with the Correct balance of local reasoning and higher-level constructs. Knowing which language that is would add specificity to this discussion...
it allows you to create a language that compiles to your original language.
You can abstract everything away. Not like Haskell where laziness accounts for some and typeclasses for some (and often an exponential growth in compile times). No, it property let's you change the language.
I got tired of loops sucking and made this, for example: https://rikspucko.koketteriet.se/bjoli/goof-loop
Homoiconicity makes writing macros easy.
If you don't like it, you can try https://rhombus-lang.org/ that is build on Racket and also has macros but uses a Python-like syntax.