4 ms·
The new and "readable" syntax looks truly ugly compared to the S-expression counterparts. Why is it that some people dread parentheses so badly and other people
by yason 16y ago
The new and "readable" syntax looks truly ugly compared to the S-expression counterparts. Why is it that some people dread parentheses so badly and other people just never mind and choose to spend the time working with them?
The main reason I consider parentheses and S-expressions superior to other syntax is that it allows for flexible navigation in the source code. I can move forward and backward, upward and inward in the tree, unit-by-unit and the unit can be a literal or a compound S-expression or anything and it just works the same. (At least in Emacs.)
- gruseom 16y agoWhy is it that some people dread parentheses so badly Two tendencies combine to make "parentheses" the Lisp topic that in sheer quantity dwarfs all other Lisp topics added together: 1. the human brain craves familiarity; 2. people love bike sheds. (Bike shed = something anybody can have an opinion and argue about irrespective of knowledge or effort. Since their purpose is to jump into the argument, these opinions tend to be strong ones, diminishing the likelihood of any resolution. Indeed, a feature of such discussions is that they are argument for argument's sake, and thus no resolution is possible or even desirable.)
- evanrmurphy 16y ago> Two tendencies combine to make "parentheses" the Lisp topic that in sheer quantity dwarfs all other Lisp topics added together Parentheses (and along with them s-expressions and macros) are one of the few characteristics still unique to Lisp. Most of the other features - including GC, dynamic typing, first-class functions and lexical scoping - are now shared with other programming languages as well.