Namespaces as Sugar (was: complexity tax)

[Mark S. Miller]

On Wed, May 28, 2008 at 12:48 AM, Maciej Stachowiak <mjs at apple.com> wrote:
>> I want to say thanks for making this proposal (open namespace search only
>> for lexical references). It leaves most of the use-cases I cited intact.
>> Well done, good compromise (not complete evisceration of property
>> qualifiers, or dismissal of unqualified import).
>
> Thank you for saying so. I wonder what Mark thinks?

Hi Maciej, I'm still absorbing, so I don't completely get it yet. But
I do like the direction a lot. It seems to be a big improvement.

> (For the record, I think
> open namespaces as affecting lexical scope only would also remove the need
> for first-class Name objects.)

Yes, this is the clearest sign of how big an improvement. Variable
lookup would once again be looking up a programmer-written identifier
in a lexical environment to get a location, as opposed to the draft
ES4 spec's double lookup (looking up an identifier to get a Name, and
then looking up a Name to get a location). IIUC, it moves the
complexity into the nature of the lexical environment handling the
lookup, but that's it. Do I have this right?

Frankly, I won't have time to look at it more today. Perhaps you could
do an informal presentation on it at the Thurs/Fri meetings coming up
in SF?

-- 
    Cheers,
    --MarkM