I said: > > Very cool! Have you considered making neoteric active by default as well?
On Thu, 13 Nov 2014 21:56:19 +0100, Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_...@web.de> wrote: > I considered it, but decided against it, because in wisp that provides > less advantages than in sweet expressions, while adding ambiguity (one > more way to spell the same code). I don't think the ability to spell something more than one way is usually termed "ambiguous"; I don't know if there's a term for that; perhaps "multiple spellings"? In any case, "multiple spellings" (or whatever it's called) is inherent in Scheme and Common Lisp. For example, 'x and (quote x) are already two ways to write the same thing. Yes, it adds a different way to spell the same code, but in many cases it would be the more common way to do it (e.g., the normal way in math and other programming languages). > That expression in wisp is simply > stuff : cos a > > or > stuff > cos a Sure. You can also do that easily in Sweet-expressions: stuff $ cos a ... or ... stuff cos a > In sweet that would be a problem, as far as I know, because if you want to do > > (stuff (cos a) b c d e) > > without neoteric expressions, you have to do it as > > stuff > cos a > b > c > d > e > > Here neoteric experssions help a lot: > > stuff cos(a) b c d e That would be the normal way (and recommended) way to do it. There are alternatives if you hate neoteric expressions in sweet-expressions, e.g.: stuff cos a \\ b \\ c \\ d \\ e But it seems to that the "obvious" way is the right way: stuff cos(a) b c d e > But in wisp you’d just do > > stuff : cos a > . b c d e > > or > stuff > cos a > . b c d e > which, though still harder to read than sweet-expressions, is less bad :-). "Less bad" is not exactly a high aspiration :-). I think wisp is the wrong trade-off anyway, but since you're working on it, contrast that to: > stuff cos(a) > . b c d e which is still harder to read, but less harder :-). > On the other hand, this difference makes neoteric expressions much less > elegant in wisp than in sweet. In sweet you can just to > > stuff > cos(a) > > because a single element on a line is treated as that element, not as a > function call. In wisp you’d have to do > > stuff > . cos(a) > > because a line always begins a function call, except when started with a > period. Of course, this why I decided to NOT have all lines begin a function call in sweet-expressions. Both sweet-expressions and I-expressions (SRFI-49) have a different semantic, because it seems to be "what humans assume" in practice. I think you're right that in the wisp semantics, using a neoteric expression at the *beginning* of a line would be especially confusing. But not everything is at the beginning of a line, and using them afterwards would (I think) be sensible). E.G.: sqrt cos(a) sin(a) --- David A. Wheeler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Comprehensive Server Monitoring with Site24x7. Monitor 10 servers for $9/Month. Get alerted through email, SMS, voice calls or mobile push notifications. Take corrective actions from your mobile device. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=154624111&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Readable-discuss mailing list Readable-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/readable-discuss
