Re: [Readable-discuss] wisp and readable - common expressions
Am Mittwoch, 19. November 2014, 18:34:25 schrieb David A. Wheeler:
It's possible to write code that is interpreted *identically*
on both wisp and sweet when indentation is enabled.
That’s cool!
In sweet, a . at the
beginning of a line post-indent is basically ignored.
Would it be possible to generalize this, so sweet would also make the
full line a continuation instead of only ignoring the dot?
That would make many uses of \\ unnecessary, and wisp would then be
almost a subset of sweet.
Thus, in both sweet and wisp:
a b c
d e
. f
g h
becomes:
(a b c
(d e)
f
(g h))
If wisp interpreted neoteric-expressions by default,
then many more expressions work in both systems, e.g.:
defun factorial()
if {n = 1}
. 1
{n * factorial{n - 1}}
That’s true, but then lines with a single element would be treated
differently than lines with multiple elements, and that is a gotcha I
want to avoid.
It hits you with things like newline
wisp:
define : hello
display Hello World!
newline
define : hello2 who
format #t Hello ~A!\n who
hello2 wisp
sweet:
define hello()
display Hello World!
newline()
hello()
define hello(who)
format #t Hello ~A!\n who
hello2 sweet
; or
hello2(sweet)
So while neoteric-expressions provide two ways to write something,
in practice, there's a more readable way that better expresses the purpose
in each case.
It’s almost as if you had intentionally motivated a quote I found
yesterday but didn’t share because I didn’t know whether it would come
off as offensive. With that kind of (unintentional?) prep-work:
wisp-expressions are not as sweet as readable, but they KISS.
:-)
Best wishes,
Arne
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Re: [Readable-discuss] wisp and readable - common expressions
David A. Wheeler: If wisp interpreted neoteric-expressions by default, then many more expressions work in both systems... On Fri, 21 Nov 2014 22:38:13 +0100, Arne Babenhauserheide arne_...@web.de wrote: That’s true, but then lines with a single element would be treated differently than lines with multiple elements, and that is a gotcha I want to avoid. As I've commented before, I think the wisp rule *seems* simpler (each line is new list), but in practice it is *itself* a gotcha, because it leads to bizarre behavior like this. Which is why both SRFI-49 and sweet-expressions don't do it. But suspending that old discussion, let's focus on the example you mentioned... It hits you with things like newline wisp: define : hello display Hello World! newline define : hello2 who format #t Hello ~A!\n who If you're using wisp you probably do *not* want to use a neoteric expression as the *first* element on a line (unless you're actually calculating what function/procedure to call). So teach that style rule, and you avoid that (wisp) gotcha. However, in *both* wisp and sweet-expressions there are MANY uses for neoteric-expressions in the REST of the line. For example, here's a line from math.slisp: cons car(lyst) flatten-operation(op cdr(lyst)) It's pretty common to have several short parameters on a line; neoteric-expressions are quite useful in this case. A quick grep finds many examples. You *can* do it using traditional s-expression notation, of course: cons (car lyst) (flatten-operation op (cdr lyst)) However, I think the former is more readable. In particular, the car(lyst) format is the same as mathematics and nearly all other programming languages, making it much more familiar. I always use the car(lyst) form when it's a call, never the (car lyst) form, so there's no problem of which format do I use. Being readable in great part depends on building on what people already know, and this is the more familiar notation. Besides, neoteric-expressions are *already* supported in curly-infix. --- 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=157005751iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk ___ Readable-discuss mailing list Readable-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/readable-discuss
Re: [Readable-discuss] wisp and readable - common expressions
Am Freitag, 21. November 2014, 18:48:16 schrieb David A. Wheeler: It is obviously possible to change the semantics of leading period. I am hesitant to add yet another operator; you may disagree but I really tried to make it a short list. I know you did. Every single additional operator came from a structure you found in code which wasn’t represented elegantly enough in sweet. I decided to forgo that goal and instead assume that the coding style will adapt to some degree to the language as long as the technically necessary features as well as 90% of the general cases are represented elegantly. Since the leading period is already almost part of the syntax, it might have a much lower conceptual cost than other operators. That’s why I chose it for that, after all ☺ I also really wanted to fix the notation, but leading period is basically never used so that is probably not really a problem. Let me think about it. Happily :) Best wishes, Arne signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part. -- 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=157005751iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk___ Readable-discuss mailing list Readable-discuss@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/readable-discuss
