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> (Oddly, I have been stricken lately by how much people hate the extra parens of lisp, but nobody bats an eye at the pointless commas of every other language.

> (Oddly, I have been stricken lately by how much people hate the extra parens of lisp, but nobody bats an eye at the pointless commas of every other language...) I just checked an a comma is a grand total of three filled pixels on my coding font in my screen while a parenthese is 12 pixels. Parentheses are freakin visual bloat. Just look at this : https://i.imgur.com/UTGjbI5.png https://i.imgur.com/UTGjbI5.png

chriswarbo 8y ago
I think that's a poor reason to choose a concrete syntax, and if it really bothers you it's easy enough to have your machine display them however you want. For example, I use https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DimParentheses https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DimParentheses to make parentheses unobtrusive. I sometimes want to see them if they're at my cursor position, so I use https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ShowParenMode https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ShowParenMode to highlight that one and its corresponding opener/closer. I use https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit to automatically keep parens/quotes/etc. balanced, move around whole subexpressions, etc. I'm sure there are similar tools for different editors (e.g. there's an incomplete list at https://github.com/shaunlebron/history-of-lisp-parens/blob/master/editors.md https://github.com/shaunlebron/history-of-lisp-parens/blob/m... ) There's a screenshot of this setup at http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2017-08-29-s_expressions.html http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2017-08-29-s_expressions.html
kazinator 8y ago
> Parentheses are freakin visual bloat. Just look at this: https://i.imgur.com/UTGjbI5.png https://i.imgur.com/UTGjbI5.png Not to mention that f and 0. We should write in Braille; f is just three dots and so is 0. Bonus: they are similar. Note that parentheses do something, whereas commas are purely gratuitous. You can't just remove the inner parentheses in (1 2 (3 4) 5) without replacing them with something else. (1, 2, (3, 4), 5) is just stupid though.

chriswarbo 8y ago

I think that's a poor reason to choose a concrete syntax, and if it really bothers you it's easy enough to have your machine display them however you want. For example, I use https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DimParentheses https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DimParentheses to make parentheses unobtrusive. I sometimes want to see them if they're at my cursor position, so I use https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ShowParenMode https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ShowParenMode to highlight that one and its corresponding opener/closer. I use https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit to automatically keep parens/quotes/etc. balanced, move around whole subexpressions, etc. I'm sure there are similar tools for different editors (e.g. there's an incomplete list at https://github.com/shaunlebron/history-of-lisp-parens/blob/master/editors.md https://github.com/shaunlebron/history-of-lisp-parens/blob/m... ) There's a screenshot of this setup at http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2017-08-29-s_expressions.html http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2017-08-29-s_expressions.html

kazinator 8y ago

> Parentheses are freakin visual bloat. Just look at this: https://i.imgur.com/UTGjbI5.png https://i.imgur.com/UTGjbI5.png Not to mention that f and 0. We should write in Braille; f is just three dots and so is 0. Bonus: they are similar. Note that parentheses do something, whereas commas are purely gratuitous. You can't just remove the inner parentheses in (1 2 (3 4) 5) without replacing them with something else. (1, 2, (3, 4), 5) is just stupid though.