Topes

[Jonathan Rees <jar@cs.cornell.edu>]

   Date:     Fri, 7 May 93 11:26:27 MET DST
   From: "J. A. Durieux" <xerox@cs.vu.nl>

   What I'm really curious about, is arguments not to add topes to Scheme.
   I know one: it's a change.  Are there others?

It would make the language much more complicated and confusing.  Sure,
if you started with references and designed the language with them as
a given, you might get something very nice, like Algol 68.  Paste them
on afterwards and you get a split-personality mess.  Twice as much
intellectual baggage, twice as many stylistic decisions to make for
every program you write, twice as many ways for a beginner to get
confused.
I don't think anyone is against change per se.