Martin, you're trying to argue that some hypothetical 'unwashed
masses' of programmers won't like clojure because of parenthesis. The
problem is you're just assuming it's the parenthesis, and there is no
way to know for sure (short of a peer-reviewed study). Maybe java
programmers don't know
I was watching Pleasantville again and it reminded me of this whole
argument.
On Mon, Dec 21, 2009 at 6:39 PM, Joost jo...@zeekat.nl wrote:
On 21 dec, 15:38, kyle smith the1physic...@gmail.com wrote:
Martin, you're trying to argue that some hypothetical 'unwashed
masses' of programmers
I may be way off here and if I am feel free to flame!
isn't it true that lisp being an AST transfers the overhead of parsing to
humans ?
Let me restate that: lisp manages to skip a step that other languages do,
i.e. parsing the language to AST ?
I understand that it gives you great power but at
As for Ten parentheses, i do not see a single one. Noone notices
starting parens because they are markers saying this is a function.
And of course noone notices ending parens because they are for your
IDE, not for the human.
This is I like, I'd never thought about S-exprs this way
On 20 Dec 2009, at 07:27, ajay gopalakrishnan wrote:
Precedence is an overrated thing. You dont run into that issue every day.
Yeah, only every time you write a simple mathematical expression. And how often
does that happen when you're programming?!
Martin
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You received this message
On 20 Dec 2009, at 06:51, ajay gopalakrishnan wrote:
Yes, Martin, please give it a try. Only then can we know if the parenthesis
is real issue or not. There is no point arguing about it. The only
disadvantage is that, over time, people will forget that it is actually a
list. But, hey, if
Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com writes:
I might try to knock up optional parens inference for Clojure and
add in some manner of curly infix as an exercise. It doesn't look like
it will be too hard. Since {} is taken for literal maps, I'd need
something else for curly infix. [|...|], %...%,
I have been studying Clojure for 3 months. My experience:
* After knowing about Lisp coding style and indents: parens
disappeared
* After knowing about reading from inside to outside: Clojure code is
more understandable (http://groups.google.com/group/clojure/
Alex,
I just thought of something. I think we're all forgetting the amount
of hacking done at the REPL.
;This is easy to type
user=(from (too (many (parens
;Uh-oh
user=to
too
many
nesting
levels?
This might be an area where the parens are a win.
Sean
On Dec 20, 10:05
It's better if we can support both. It's never one size fits all.
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 11:49 AM, Sean Devlin francoisdev...@gmail.comwrote:
Alex,
I just thought of something. I think we're all forgetting the amount
of hacking done at the REPL.
;This is easy to type
user=(from (too
It's better if we can support both. It's never one size fits all.
Who is we?
If you're talking about something *you* want, you can go build it…
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On 20/12/2009 5:39 PM, Richard Newman wrote:
It's better if we can support both. It's never one size fits all.
Who is we?
If you're talking about something *you* want, you can go build it…
I see Clojure is well on the way to building a community at least as
repellingly exclusionary as all
Martin,
I see Clojure is well on the way to building a community at least as
repellingly exclusionary as all the other Lisps nobody uses.
Thanks for the thinly veiled jab.
I've worked on a bunch of libraries, answered a bunch of questions on
the mailing list, and attended a few meetups. I
Hi,
On 20 Dez., 18:41, Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com wrote:
On 20/12/2009 5:39 PM, Richard Newman wrote:
It's better if we can support both. It's never one size fits all.
Who is we?
If you're talking about something *you* want, you can go build it
I see Clojure is well on the way
can't you understand the reactions? The Lisp-people have been through
this discussion for what? 20 years, 30 years, 40 years? And it comes
up in intervalls which feel like once a month (don't nail me down on
the numbers). Go to comp.lang.lisp and do a search for it. Really.
There is
At 12:09 PM 12/20/2009, Richard Newman wrote:
[...]
I think most of the active Clojure community ranges from not caring to
genuinely liking s-expression notation,
And all the way to disliking the replacement of many parens
with square brackets in the syntax. That's why I, a pendant
who prior
That's a concise and clear way to summarize the issue.
If you compare the IDE support required for different languages, the
support required to write syntactically correct Clojure code is pretty
small compared to others.
I do not get it, it's longer and much more painful to write Java code
with
Peace, brother.
And btw, who are you to tell others what they ought to do or not to do ?
Regards,
--
Laurent
2009/12/20 Charras guido.carba...@gmail.com
can't believe, you guys, WAIST! your time discussing about
parentheses. There are far more interesting things to discuss. Please
don't
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 02:30:58PM -0500, Luc Préfontaine wrote:
People bought HP calculators not for the Postfix notation but for all
the others things it offered at the time...
Some of us _still_ only buy HP calculators because of the postfix
notation. Oh, the other things are nice, too.
:))
Luc
On Sun, 2009-12-20 at 15:00 -0800, David Brown wrote:
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 02:30:58PM -0500, Luc Préfontaine wrote:
People bought HP calculators not for the Postfix notation but for all
the others things it offered at the time...
Some of us _still_ only buy HP
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Luc Préfontaine
lprefonta...@softaddicts.ca wrote:
:))
The Lisp Beard?
Luc
On Sun, 2009-12-20 at 15:00 -0800, David Brown wrote:
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 02:30:58PM -0500, Luc Préfontaine wrote:
People bought HP calculators not for
John McCarthy the creator of lisp does have beard. :)
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/personal.html
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 7:37 PM, David Nolen dnolen.li...@gmail.com wrote:
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 5:48 PM, Luc Préfontaine
lprefonta...@softaddicts.ca wrote:
:))
The Lisp
Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com writes:
For each line that is not within a vector, and does not have an
opening parenthesis, infer an opening parenthesis at the start of the
line. Remember the level of indentation, and infer a closing
parenthesis at the end of the line *before* the next line
I do have one but it still has some grey in it :)
On Sun, 2009-12-20 at 19:41 -0500, Wilson MacGyver wrote:
John McCarthy the creator of lisp does have beard. :)
http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/personal.html
On Sun, Dec 20, 2009 at 7:37 PM, David Nolen dnolen.li...@gmail.com wrote:
On 20 Dec 2009, at 19:30, Luc Préfontaine wrote:
That's a concise and clear way to summarize the issue.
If you compare the IDE support required for different languages, the support
required to write syntactically correct Clojure code is pretty small compared
to others.
I like Clojure, I
It seems that noone has brought up the amazing paredit mode for emacs which
gives you keyboard commands for s-expression structure manipulation. It also
makes sure you never get your close parenthesis wrong. I use it and can't
imagine writing any medium+-complexity code without it.
On Dec 19,
It's certainly something I would like to add to counterclockwise.
If only paredit's code was written in clojure, it could have been more
easily reused by enclojure, La Clojure and counterclockwise ! :-(
2009/12/19 Avital Oliver avi...@thewe.net
It seems that noone has brought up the amazing
Hi,
On 18 Dez., 20:07, Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com wrote:
One of the things that always puts people off of Lisp, as we all know, are
the parentheses.
one of the things that always put Lispers off is this same question.
I have three arguments to make. Love, reason and trust.
* Love.
in particular looks splendidly readable.
Almost... monadic.
The parenthesis inference here is very simple, and could be stated in two
sentences:
For each line that is not within a vector, and does not have an opening
parenthesis, infer an opening parenthesis at the start of the line. Remember
-with +
Also with two. That last example in particular looks splendidly readable.
Almost... monadic.
The parenthesis inference here is very simple, and could be stated in two
sentences:
For each line that is not within a vector, and does not have an opening
parenthesis, infer an opening
It is proudly a Lisp for people that want to get things done. Any
Java/.NET/Python/Brainfuck/Ruby/Basic/C/C++ (No Perlmongers :)) that
want to get better are welcome. However, there is a way things are
done in the language, driven by the underlying problems reality
imposes on
On 19 Dec 2009, at 13:50, Stefan Kamphausen wrote:
Hi,
On 18 Dez., 20:07, Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com wrote:
One of the things that always puts people off of Lisp, as we all know, are
the parentheses.
one of the things that always put Lispers off is this same question.
I have
I guess it's mostly a matter of judging a language by its long-term
merits instead of initial appearance -- just like with so many other
things in life.
That - right there - is a tacit admission that the Clojure community will find
it actively desirable that it remain a minority language,
On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 8:25 AM, Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com wrote:
I guess it's mostly a matter of judging a language by its long-term
merits instead of initial appearance -- just like with so many other
things in life.
That - right there - is a tacit admission that the Clojure
Martin,
I was short with you yesterday. I'm sorry about that. Please let me
try again.
I'm all for providing better documentation, eliminating bad design,
and holding hands as people get up to speed. As a community, we
constantly need to do more work to make it accessible. That's the
point
Very abstract java example (as concise as possible):
ListObject processList(ListObject oldObjects)
{
ListObject newObjects = ArrayListObject;
for(Object object : oldObjects)
{
newObjects.add(manipulate(object));
}
return newObjects;
}
Clojure equivalent:
(defn
Oops.. left two parentheses out in my Java code. Guess that just furthers my
point. :)
ListObject newObjects = ArrayListObject();
On Dec 19, 2009, at 12:04 PM, Joseph Smith wrote:
Very abstract java example (as concise as possible):
ListObject processList(ListObject oldObjects)
{
The intended audience are Software Engineers. Not the people who hide
behind this-is-not-intuitive their lack of willing to learn the most
effective way to spend their professional life.
Why is it that you believe them to be mutually exclusive events? You portray
Software engineers as if they are
On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 9:21 AM, David Nolen dnolen.li...@gmail.com wrote:
I don't think anybody in the Clojure community wants to Clojure to be a
fringe language.
Actually, I don't mind if Clojure retains a certain degree of fringe status.
To clarify, I think the ideal size for a language
On Dec 18, 9:28 pm, Sean Devlin francoisdev...@gmail.com wrote:
It is proudly a Lisp for people that want to get things done. Any
Java/.NET/Python/Brainfuck/Ruby/Basic/C/C++ (No Perlmongers :))
I was a Perlmonger back in the day. :)
-SS
--
You received this message because you are
Well, good thing you repented of your evil ways
On Dec 19, 3:37 pm, Stuart Sierra the.stuart.sie...@gmail.com wrote:
On Dec 18, 9:28 pm, Sean Devlin francoisdev...@gmail.com wrote:
It is proudly a Lisp for people that want to get things done. Any
On 19 dec, 15:25, Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com wrote:
I guess it's mostly a matter of judging a language by its long-term
merits instead of initial appearance -- just like with so many other
things in life.
That - right there - is a tacit admission that the Clojure community will
Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com writes:
I trust the many, many more people that have rejected Lisp for its
hostile syntax and delusions of importance than the statistically
insignificant minority who have actually stuck with it.
Sometimes people are just looking for excuse to criticize.
Alex Osborne a...@meshy.org writes:
But I'm trying to think of it from the point of view of Joe Q. Coder,
who will take one look at our beloved elegant, expressive Clojure, see
all the parens and run screaming.
But this is the same great idea that everyone who's ever used a lisp
since the
can't believe, you guys, WAIST! your time discussing about
parentheses. There are far more interesting things to discuss. Please
don't waist time (time is life, is all we have) in that, and
specially, this is a public group, where knowledge should be share,
not nonsense discussions.
If somebody
I think this discussion is getting too long, but anyway ..
Coming from an imperative background, especially Java which is a lot
bloated, when I tried to read Lisp code, I start to get the feeling that I
am staring at the same place for a long time. In an imperative setting, it
definitely means
On Sat, 19 Dec 2009 14:22:22 +
Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com wrote:
On 19 Dec 2009, at 13:50, Stefan Kamphausen wrote:
* Reason. They could have been taken away in more than 50 years of
history. Guess what, they are still there.
Guess what? NOBODY uses Lisp. Because of those parens.
Is it possible that people are confusing their inability to comprehend
deeply nested function calls (no offense intended by that - I hit this
often myself) with the strangeness of the perens? I think what others
have said about having to think more about each line of Clojure is
true. It is more
Phil Hagelberg p...@hagelb.org writes:
Alex Osborne a...@meshy.org writes:
But this is the same great idea that everyone who's ever used a lisp
since the dawn of programming has come up with and despite numerous
attempts, to my knowledge not a single one of them has ever taken off.
You're
Give it a shot. Hack up a prototype. Let's see what happens.
On Dec 20, 12:07 am, Alex Osborne a...@meshy.org wrote:
Phil Hagelberg p...@hagelb.org writes:
Alex Osborne a...@meshy.org writes:
But this is the same great idea that everyone who's ever used a lisp
since the dawn of
Is it possible that people are confusing their inability to comprehend
deeply nested function calls (no offense intended by that - I hit this
often myself) with the strangeness of the perens? I think what others
have said about having to think more about each line of Clojure is
true. It is
Yes, Martin, please give it a try. Only then can we know if the parenthesis
is real issue or not. There is no point arguing about it. The only
disadvantage is that, over time, people will forget that it is actually a
list. But, hey, if it does not prevent us from writing efficient and correct
code
( x y) how do you read this literally left-to-right?
I've been writing Common Lisp and Clojure for about 6 years now, and I
read that less-than x y without any confusion.
I have almost no problems with prefix notation; even arithmetic (which
I was taught in infix for years) rarely trips me
ajay gopalakrishnan ajgop...@gmail.com writes:
If possible, I would also want to see a macro that allows me to write (x y)
instead of ( x y).
Here's Chouser's infix function, which he apparently has never used
since writing it:
http://paste.lisp.org/display/75230
(+ x y) can be read
Precedence is an overrated thing. You dont run into that issue every day.
When we do we have the support of (). So, a developer must have the option
to disambiguate it when necessary, but otherwise should not have to type the
otherwise redundant () all the time. (All this talk is about arithmetic
)
With a startling two parentheses and Rich's corrected version into:
-
line-seq (reader filename)
partition-all *batch-size*
pmap count-lines
apply merge-with +
Also with two. That last example in particular looks splendidly readable.
Almost... monadic.
The parenthesis inference here is very
The main downside of such an approach is that if you copy and paste
your code to a new context in which it has a different level of
indenting, it's very easy to screw things up. You then have no way to
re-indent the code without fully analyzing and understanding the
*semantics* of the code,
parentheses and Rich's corrected version into:
-
line-seq (reader filename)
partition-all *batch-size*
pmap count-lines
apply merge-with +
Also with two. That last example in particular looks splendidly readable.
Almost... monadic.
The parenthesis inference here is very simple
In my personal experience, the fastest way to get accustomed to the
parenthesis is to learn how to read the indentation. That was the
biggest hurdle for me coming from reading C/Java code. Lisp
indentation is quite expressive and a little more subtle (unlike the
indent-two-spaces-for-a-loop scheme
Welcome to the big club of people who in last 50 years came up with a
brilliant idea to fix lisp.
As for Ten parentheses, i do not see a single one. Noone notices
starting parens because they are markers saying this is a function.
And of course noone notices ending parens because they are for
On 19 Dec 2009, at 00:29, Mark Engelberg wrote:
The main downside of such an approach is that if you copy and paste
your code to a new context in which it has a different level of
indenting, it's very easy to screw things up. You then have no way to
re-indent the code without fully
On Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:07:43 +
Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com wrote:
For each line that is not within a vector, and does not have an opening
parenthesis, infer an opening parenthesis at the start of the line. Remember
the level of indentation, and infer a closing parenthesis at the end
On 19 Dec 2009, at 00:53, Sean Devlin wrote:
What you're looking for is called Python.
The parens are your friend. Learn to love them. They are there to
remind you that you're building a data structure, not just writing
code.
Sean
As it happens, I agree with you: I learned to stop
On Dec 18, 4:59 pm, Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com wrote:
But I'm trying to think of it from the point of view of Joe Q. Coder, who
will take one look at our beloved elegant, expressive Clojure, see all the
parens and run screaming.
Let James Gosling worry about Joe Q. Coder. He does a
Look, Clojure does a lot to make life easier. But if Joe Q. Coder
isn't willing to *try* to work with parens, he won't have a chance
picking up Clojure.
It is proudly a Lisp for people that want to get things done. Any
Java/.NET/Python/Brainfuck/Ruby/Basic/C/C++ (No Perlmongers :)) that
want to
I read this and think of Roedy Green's essay on source code in
database, http://mindprod.com/project/scid.html and on Knuth's
'literate programming' - the idea that source code is inherently not
it's representation (it's the reader output that's homoiconic, not the
file representation on disk)
Martin Coxall pseudo.m...@me.com writes:
My question is this: why can't we introduce a simple and importantly,
optional 'off-side rule' (much simpler than Haskell's) that allows the
reader to infer many of the parentheses?
If you haven't seen them before, check out sweet expressions. This
Many/most of the best programmers I know have allergic reactions to
parens. I think this is a normal reaction based on the amount of
successful time they have spent with ; terminated languages. FWIW, I
certainly flinch when I see Objective-C code with [ ] in strange
places, although these other
Anniepoo annie6...@yahoo.com writes:
What's hostile to most programmers is that Clojure demands a lot more
thinking per line of code. I remember when OO came in, and then when
design patterns came in - each decreased the amount of thinking about
code and increased the amount of typing.
Hi,
I've a different take on the entire thing. Based on my experience I have
realized the following:
1. A lot of software engineers do not have a CS background. Out of them,
many joined this field for the fun of coding and are willing to learn new
things. I know many like that. However,
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