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> It's not compact at all, You are now arguing against parens. You can have mostly prefix syntax without parens, with blocks delimited with indentation only. S

> It's not compact at all, You are now arguing against parens. You can have mostly prefix syntax without parens, with blocks delimited with indentation only. Scheme's sweet-expressions[1] are one such example. Anyway, please take my example, remove the parens and check if your argument still applies. If it does, then it's down to the function names and your (common) misconception that "+" or "^" is somehow more readable, easier to understand or something than "sum" or "sqr". Where I simply disagree. BTW: why do you insist on using infix syntax for a couple of operators, while you use every other possible operator in a prefix notation and are happy with it? What is the difference between "sqrt" and "-" which makes it ok to use sqrt in prefix form? > Limiting the number of parentheses is also best when possible. No. It's only best if it aids readability. This is something that Lisp does rather well actually - there are many examples of equivalent Java and Clojure expressions where Clojure version has half as many parens. Getting rid of parens for the sake of getting rid of parens is counterproductive. [1] http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-110/srfi-110.html http://srfi.schemers.org/srfi-110/srfi-110.html

Houshalter 11y ago
Because your version takes up 6 lines! A simple one line expression! And yes you can remove the parentheses, but not only does no one do that, it still takes up 6 lines. And then you have significant whitespace too. >why do you insist on using infix syntax for a couple of operators, while you use every other possible operator in a prefix notation and are happy with it? What is the difference between "sqrt" and "-" which makes it ok to use sqrt in prefix form? Because that's universal and standard for math notation. But also sqrt only takes one argument. If it took two arguments, then it would be perfectly reasonable to add an infix operator for it too. Many languages do add infix operators for everything from combining strings to ANDing booleans, etc, because they are so much more readable.

Houshalter 11y ago

Because your version takes up 6 lines! A simple one line expression! And yes you can remove the parentheses, but not only does no one do that, it still takes up 6 lines. And then you have significant whitespace too. >why do you insist on using infix syntax for a couple of operators, while you use every other possible operator in a prefix notation and are happy with it? What is the difference between "sqrt" and "-" which makes it ok to use sqrt in prefix form? Because that's universal and standard for math notation. But also sqrt only takes one argument. If it took two arguments, then it would be perfectly reasonable to add an infix operator for it too. Many languages do add infix operators for everything from combining strings to ANDing booleans, etc, because they are so much more readable.