4 ms·

For anyone who'd be interested in trying a Lisp (with Clojure probably being the most mainstream one at the moment) and who's been put off by the parens, paredi

by gnl 8y ago

For anyone who'd be interested in trying a Lisp (with Clojure probably being the most mainstream one at the moment) and who's been put off by the parens, paredit and/or Emacs: - Parinfer [https://shaunlebron.github.io/parinfer/ https://shaunlebron.github.io/parinfer/] - makes the parens follow indentation and vice versa and effectively makes them a non-issue at worst and a great advantage at best (you can combine it with paredit later on to perform all kinds of ninja magic when editing code) - Cursive [https://cursive-ide.com/ https://cursive-ide.com/] - a Clojure plugin for IntelliJ IDEA for a more 'just works' experience. Integrates parinfer, among other things, and is generally pretty great (I'm a happy customer). And last but not least - rainbow parens to keep nested expressions readable. Pretty much every Lisp editor has them more or less out of the box.

AlainPicard 8y ago
I would very much NOT recommend using something like parinfer; IMO if one is learning lisp, one ought not to try to avoid the parentheses, but rather learn the advantages of using them. So instead of parinfer, use paredit and learn the key bindings for moving up/down/formard one sexpr at a time. It's frustrating at first, but after a few days, you will never want to go back to line oriented languages.
- gnl 8y ago
  Well, first of all let me emphasise again that it's not an either/or proposition, they work together perfectly fine. Personally I use paredit extensively and yes, going back to a language/environment without it feels like having to work with my hands tied behind my back, but I still make use of parinfer as well. Sometimes just deleting a couple of lines in Vim (IdeaVIM in my case) and knowing that parinfer will take care of the parens feels faster and more comfortable to me than using paredit. YMMV. And as far as beginners are concerned - for someone coming from an OOP/imperative programming/C-style syntax background, a LISP will seem very foreign and weird for many reasons, the parens being just one of them. I think having the ability to get your feet wet and start dabbling without an upfront investment is a good thing and the "jumping into the deep end" approach isn't for everyone, especially not for many beginners who at this point have only a very vague idea that a LISP might be for them and are already facing a number of new concepts that they need to get their heads around. Parinfer requires no investment, Paredit requires some. Not much, but still. And going from one to the other as one feels drawn to explore the language is, I think, a perfectly natural transition, which requires no unlearning or changing of habits whatsoever, and as such it's also a more accessible path to getting into LISP. In my book, that's a good thing. But here we're beginning to move into a general attitude/philosophy territory that's hard to argue about, so I'd be perfectly comfortable with agreeing to disagree and leaving it at that.
- kazinator 8y ago
  Counterpoint: there is justification in the claim that the possibility of parinfer is one of the advantages of parentheses. So maybe: use parinfer, but don't overlook the other advantages of parentheses.

by gnl 8y ago

AlainPicard 8y ago

I would very much NOT recommend using something like parinfer; IMO if one is learning lisp, one ought not to try to avoid the parentheses, but rather learn the advantages of using them. So instead of parinfer, use paredit and learn the key bindings for moving up/down/formard one sexpr at a time. It's frustrating at first, but after a few days, you will never want to go back to line oriented languages.

gnl 8y ago
Well, first of all let me emphasise again that it's not an either/or proposition, they work together perfectly fine. Personally I use paredit extensively and yes, going back to a language/environment without it feels like having to work with my hands tied behind my back, but I still make use of parinfer as well. Sometimes just deleting a couple of lines in Vim (IdeaVIM in my case) and knowing that parinfer will take care of the parens feels faster and more comfortable to me than using paredit. YMMV. And as far as beginners are concerned - for someone coming from an OOP/imperative programming/C-style syntax background, a LISP will seem very foreign and weird for many reasons, the parens being just one of them. I think having the ability to get your feet wet and start dabbling without an upfront investment is a good thing and the "jumping into the deep end" approach isn't for everyone, especially not for many beginners who at this point have only a very vague idea that a LISP might be for them and are already facing a number of new concepts that they need to get their heads around. Parinfer requires no investment, Paredit requires some. Not much, but still. And going from one to the other as one feels drawn to explore the language is, I think, a perfectly natural transition, which requires no unlearning or changing of habits whatsoever, and as such it's also a more accessible path to getting into LISP. In my book, that's a good thing. But here we're beginning to move into a general attitude/philosophy territory that's hard to argue about, so I'd be perfectly comfortable with agreeing to disagree and leaving it at that.
kazinator 8y ago
Counterpoint: there is justification in the claim that the possibility of parinfer is one of the advantages of parentheses. So maybe: use parinfer, but don't overlook the other advantages of parentheses.