jeff@aiai.edinburgh.ac.UK (Jeff Dalton) (04/08/91)
> As to the order of left-right being "natural": this is a very > Anglo-centric viewpoint, I think. It is not just English that's left-to-right. > (Of course, calling your conditional "if" is also Anglo-centric - As long as we're into cultural differences, there are a number of other places where Scheme shows a cultural bias. For example, the syntax of numbers, the order of evaluation in a BEGIN, and the character set -- at least. If one wants to adapt Scheme to another language or culture, there are many things about the presentation of Scheme programs that one would want to change. None of this is an argument against having a left-to-right order in the English-based presentation. > but you have to call your conditional _something_, whereas you > don't have to specify your order of evaluation, Yes, but if we are going to fix the order, what order should we choose? That is where the arguments for left-to-right come in. -- jeff