On Tue, 18 Nov 2014 23:46:44 +0100, Arne Babenhauserheide <arne_...@web.de> wrote: > ... Yes, if you know > all the sweet syntax, quite a few code snippets will likely look more > readable than those in wisp. But the additional syntax elements > provide a high barrier for learning, because they require retraining > the eyes.
I think that's a trade worth making. More syntax *does* take more training, but if you look at a lot of code, then that additional syntax can pay back large dividends. > > "Less bad" is not exactly a high aspiration :-). > > It’s a different trade-off: Simplicity against less rough edges. ... > > 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. > > It’s what lisp and scheme do, but for example it isn’t what the shell > does. I agree that lisp and scheme programmers tend to assume this, > but I don’t think that it is right for indentation-based scheme. But > since this is the main forking point between sweet and wisp, I guess > it isn’t a point which can be changed by argument ☺ Fair enough :-). > It comes down to personal preferences: The weight we give to different > aesthetic aspects of programming languages. For me, the syntactic > simplicity is one of the main selling points of lisp and scheme, and > sweet departs from that by adding more than the absolute minimum of > the required syntax elements for creating a general, indentation-based > representation of scheme-code. Neither Scheme nor Common Lisp are so simple to parse once you consider their full generality (e.g., number types). > The cost I pay for that is that there will be code snippets which will > look less elegant in wisp than in sweet. You could say, that they look > less sweet ☺ ... > Best wishes, > Arne You too! I view this as a friendly competition. We both agree that there's a need for a Lisp syntax that is general and homoiconic, and that indentation can help. We differ on how to best exploit that, that's all. Thanks. --- David A. Wheeler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Download BIRT iHub F-Type - The Free Enterprise-Grade BIRT Server from Actuate! Instantly Supercharge Your Business Reports and Dashboards with Interactivity, Sharing, Native Excel Exports, App Integration & more Get technology previously reserved for billion-dollar corporations, FREE http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=157005751&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Readable-discuss mailing list Readable-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/readable-discuss
