5 ms·

Not your parent, but I personally didn't find S-expression syntax to be superior. Treating code as data and vice versa is metaprogramming, and it should be some

Not your parent, but I personally didn't find S-expression syntax to be superior. Treating code as data and vice versa is metaprogramming, and it should be something you know how to do when you need it, easy enough to where you're not really going out of your way to do it when you do need it, but weird enough so that you can notice it and immediately see that you are going to need to put on your thinking cap in order to proceed further down the road of understanding this program, when you come across it. I've yet to see a better approach than Ruby's.

taeric 8y ago
Amusingly, I've yet to hit as much frustration as I have when using a few ruby packages at work. Holy hell is it confusing to figure out where things came from, sometimes. I don't necessarily care for the data as code, most of the time; but I do like that most everything has a sensible way to serialize to a file. Even better, unless I am wanting to get optimized, the round trip can take care of itself. Curious what the syntax is for a basic list of key value pairs? Well, it is the same as any list of pairs. Which is the same as any list, unless you are trying to get fancy. This freedom really is liberating, at times. Yes, some folks have made macros so that they have a syntax to have a different literal for different styles of maps/tables/etc. By and large, life is easier if you don't use those and just stick to the minimal syntax necessary to do this. Which really helps with your concern. When I can see what the transformation is, I can literally substitute into my mental model what the macro is doing, so that I don't have to juggle a bunch of crap around. And all of this, oddly enough, lands you into not caring if you are calling to a function or a macro. I have more trust in calling things in most lisps I've worked with, because I can understand both ways in terms of themselves easily enough. With ruby, I'm often wary of using a new method in a source file, because I really can't trust all of the interactions that are assumed for it to work out.
- NegativeLatency 8y ago
  To be fair there’s a lot of poorly designed hard to read ruby meta programming out there. I find that the language is flexible enough that I never really reach for meta programming when tackling problems.
  - taeric 8y ago
    I've always been amused by how quickly and deeply some people reach for meta programming. To the point that I really just don't get why.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  I'm not sure how much of our respective experiences is due to familiarity. For example, I have REPL power tools and a really good understanding of Ruby's object model to help me figure out what something's doing. So that almost never concerns me all that much. Whenever I pull in a new gem, I usually budget a few minutes to wrap my head around the semantics of how the gem is expected to be used. Occasionally the documentation isn't good enough and I need to source dive. What I never have to deal with is new syntax. No matter how Ruby is being used, the syntax is always the same comforting, pleasing-to-read near-prose. What changes when you use metaprogramming in Ruby is semantics. You can't add new syntax to the language unless you actually change the language. Like you, I find people misusing metaprogramming. For me usually this is fairly easy to detect. If I look for the source of a method and it's dynamically generated, then showing the source will take me to where it was generated. I won't pretend to have chosen Ruby over Lisp because I liked the language better. I chose it because I figured it would help me get a job better. But as time went on I found myself at home with Ruby. I don't think it would take me all that long to get used to any given Lisp. But I don't believe it actually gives anyone superpowers, at least, not superpowers you can't have with Ruby. I have yet to hear a lisper actually articulate a solid advantage for code as data. When there isn't any functional reason to choose between alternatives, all there's left is the aesthetic. Which is where all those parenthesis finally become important.
  - taeric 8y ago
    Hmm, you seem to be indicating that people use macros to create new syntax all of the time. I have not actually found that to be the case that often. In particular, there are only two macros I know I use somewhat regularly that do this. LOOP and FORMAT. And even those always follow the same general syntax of lisp. Unless you get crazy, it is not usual to actually use things that drastically change the full syntax of lisp. But again, in lisp, you probably make use of more metaprogramming than you'd realize, precisely because it is indistinguishable from normal programming. (I'm tempted to contrast this with some of the DSLs I've seen in the likes of scala and ruby... I have a hypothesis that all of the hoops you have to jump through to make a macro like construct cause people to go all in when they do so.) Now, I'm also not claiming lisp gives superpowers. Again, I'd almost go the other route. Most lisp is typically quite simple, because you can accomplish quite a lot that way. Which does bring it back to aesthetics some. The parens just flat out don't bother me. They are a bemusing joke, that never actually made sense. Too often, the difference is minimal compared to most C programs. Foo(bar) becomes (Foo bar). Which isn't that big of a deal. The basic math changes from infix to prefix is a bit to get used to. However, I find it is much more pleasant to deal with generics (+ matrix1 matrix2) as opposed to matrix1.plus(matrix2) of java and the like. Of course, I was also a huge fan of my HP calculator in college. RPN for the win! :) So, yes, I do think it comes down to preference. I don't think you're preference is wrong/bad. I do think your view of lisp sounds colored more by bemusing jokes than actual problems in lisp code. But, I fully grant my experience with ruby may be colored by an overly ambitious project written in it.

taeric 8y ago

Amusingly, I've yet to hit as much frustration as I have when using a few ruby packages at work. Holy hell is it confusing to figure out where things came from, sometimes. I don't necessarily care for the data as code, most of the time; but I do like that most everything has a sensible way to serialize to a file. Even better, unless I am wanting to get optimized, the round trip can take care of itself. Curious what the syntax is for a basic list of key value pairs? Well, it is the same as any list of pairs. Which is the same as any list, unless you are trying to get fancy. This freedom really is liberating, at times. Yes, some folks have made macros so that they have a syntax to have a different literal for different styles of maps/tables/etc. By and large, life is easier if you don't use those and just stick to the minimal syntax necessary to do this. Which really helps with your concern. When I can see what the transformation is, I can literally substitute into my mental model what the macro is doing, so that I don't have to juggle a bunch of crap around. And all of this, oddly enough, lands you into not caring if you are calling to a function or a macro. I have more trust in calling things in most lisps I've worked with, because I can understand both ways in terms of themselves easily enough. With ruby, I'm often wary of using a new method in a source file, because I really can't trust all of the interactions that are assumed for it to work out.

NegativeLatency 8y ago
To be fair there’s a lot of poorly designed hard to read ruby meta programming out there. I find that the language is flexible enough that I never really reach for meta programming when tackling problems.
- taeric 8y ago
  I've always been amused by how quickly and deeply some people reach for meta programming. To the point that I really just don't get why.
vinceguidry 8y ago
I'm not sure how much of our respective experiences is due to familiarity. For example, I have REPL power tools and a really good understanding of Ruby's object model to help me figure out what something's doing. So that almost never concerns me all that much. Whenever I pull in a new gem, I usually budget a few minutes to wrap my head around the semantics of how the gem is expected to be used. Occasionally the documentation isn't good enough and I need to source dive. What I never have to deal with is new syntax. No matter how Ruby is being used, the syntax is always the same comforting, pleasing-to-read near-prose. What changes when you use metaprogramming in Ruby is semantics. You can't add new syntax to the language unless you actually change the language. Like you, I find people misusing metaprogramming. For me usually this is fairly easy to detect. If I look for the source of a method and it's dynamically generated, then showing the source will take me to where it was generated. I won't pretend to have chosen Ruby over Lisp because I liked the language better. I chose it because I figured it would help me get a job better. But as time went on I found myself at home with Ruby. I don't think it would take me all that long to get used to any given Lisp. But I don't believe it actually gives anyone superpowers, at least, not superpowers you can't have with Ruby. I have yet to hear a lisper actually articulate a solid advantage for code as data. When there isn't any functional reason to choose between alternatives, all there's left is the aesthetic. Which is where all those parenthesis finally become important.
- taeric 8y ago
  Hmm, you seem to be indicating that people use macros to create new syntax all of the time. I have not actually found that to be the case that often. In particular, there are only two macros I know I use somewhat regularly that do this. LOOP and FORMAT. And even those always follow the same general syntax of lisp. Unless you get crazy, it is not usual to actually use things that drastically change the full syntax of lisp. But again, in lisp, you probably make use of more metaprogramming than you'd realize, precisely because it is indistinguishable from normal programming. (I'm tempted to contrast this with some of the DSLs I've seen in the likes of scala and ruby... I have a hypothesis that all of the hoops you have to jump through to make a macro like construct cause people to go all in when they do so.) Now, I'm also not claiming lisp gives superpowers. Again, I'd almost go the other route. Most lisp is typically quite simple, because you can accomplish quite a lot that way. Which does bring it back to aesthetics some. The parens just flat out don't bother me. They are a bemusing joke, that never actually made sense. Too often, the difference is minimal compared to most C programs. Foo(bar) becomes (Foo bar). Which isn't that big of a deal. The basic math changes from infix to prefix is a bit to get used to. However, I find it is much more pleasant to deal with generics (+ matrix1 matrix2) as opposed to matrix1.plus(matrix2) of java and the like. Of course, I was also a huge fan of my HP calculator in college. RPN for the win! :) So, yes, I do think it comes down to preference. I don't think you're preference is wrong/bad. I do think your view of lisp sounds colored more by bemusing jokes than actual problems in lisp code. But, I fully grant my experience with ruby may be colored by an overly ambitious project written in it.