On Nov 12, 1:40 pm, "Michael Wood" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Your hypothetical IDE, could provide what you want whether or not > longer aliases exist. There's nothing stopping someone from writing > an IDE that converts aget to array-get or [] when it reads in a file > and does the opposite when it writes it.
On Nov 12, 1:47 pm, Dave Newton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > --- On Wed, 11/12/08, David <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > You're right. We don't. Not only that. I can't think how aget > > instead of [] (and all the similar verbosity, as it were) fits > > into "Almost no syntax" and "Core advantage still code-as-data and > > syntactic abstraction" of the "Lisp is a good thing" section of the > > (current) Clojure rationale. > > The "almost no syntax" part is because (aget a 5) introduces no additional > syntactical elements, whereas a[5] does. That doesn't mean it's better or > worse, it just means there's less syntax. > > > [...] from my point of view a[5] is less "syntax" than (aget > > a 5). I'm not saying my opinion won't change. > > We're just using different definitions of syntax. The Lispy idea of syntax is > that everything looks like same: (fn-or-special-form args). a[5] breaks that > regularity, value judgments aside. That's why I put my "syntax" in quotes. From my chair having almost no syntax is a non-issue. I'd trade in syntax smallness for readability any time. > > There, I've said it. I. D. E.. Without it the whole > > thing (Clojure, that is) is in danger of remaining (merely) > > academic, joining a long line of other Lisps. Not even > > Smalltalk(s), with somewhat "more of a syntax" yet still > > close to "code-as-data", could escape this fate. > > That, IMO, had absolutely nothing to do with IDE support. Smalltalk IDE's of > the day blew everything else out of the water (as did many of the Lisp IDEs) > and it's only relatively recently that we're seeing similarly-functional > non-Lisp/Smalltalk IDEs. Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I wasn't implying that having IDEs is the only factor in making it in the real world. I'm just saying that not having them doesn't improve the odds. > > If it's only brevity that you're after then aget > > could be abbreviated still, I guess: ag anyone? > > There's "terse", and there's "concise". I know you're attempting humor, but > IMO there's a difference between "association"/"assoc" and "assoc"/"a" in the > amount of information being lost in each pair. Nothing stopping anybody from > writing "verbose mode" macros. Michael also stated (see above) that nothing was stopping anyone from doing anything. Surely you're not proposing that we all write our own IDEs and/or macros? That would really make .cjls more colourful. It would, however, also make them unmaintainable. Take a look at the following code, for example: http://www.cs.bgu.ac.il/~omri/Humor/verbose-c.html Now think away the macros for a moment... No, I think that, if at all, we need a single set of macros. As far as the IDEs are concerned, if we all try "inventing" our own (or plugins for the existing ones), they will all be half-done at best. It's better to focus on one project than spread the effort across several ones. At least until the developer base is large enough to be able to afford such a distribution. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
