Hallo,
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 10:08 AM, Dave Bayer
<[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Read "Coders at Work": The most reasoned, pragmatic objection to Lisp family
> language syntax over e.g. Haskell syntax is simply code density. This
> consideration gets up-ended if one's primary constraint is entering code
> through a novel, limited bandwidth interface. Lisp's parentheses are an
> historical artifact tied to an input method that iPad-like devices will help
> supplant; even on keyboards one can get rid of most parentheses by the
> Haskell $ op and resolving the "missing outline levels" issue. One actually
> thinks in syntax trees, and could enter them directly as trees through a
> gesture-based editor that understood the grammar, your choices and their
> probabilities.
>
Have you ever tried the paredit minor mode for Emacs? It's a
minor mode that keeps parentheses balanced no matter what, with
several commands like slurp the next or previous s-expression, or barf
the next or previous s-expression. Bound to gestures, these commands
would make editing Lisp code a no-brainer in touch-oriented devices.
I know everybody is tired of hearing this, but Lisp's syntactic
power comes from its simplicity and uniformity.
Cheers,
--
-alex
http://www.ventonegro.org/
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