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>I see GP writes about s-exps specifically, missed it at first My experience is with s-expressions being a wall of text. I haven't used prolog (end erlang uses

>I see GP writes about s-exps specifically, missed it at first My experience is with s-expressions being a wall of text. I haven't used prolog (end erlang uses the same syntax) enough to have a beef with them. Perhaps I was being over general.

klibertp 7y ago
> My experience is with s-expressions being a wall of text. That's sad, but unfortunately not that rare. Making a Lisp readable is not as easy as doing so in Python. In my experience, Lisp code written by an experienced lisper who cares about readability can often be much more readable than well-written Python (assuming equal levels of proficiency in their respective languages). On the other hand, the number of ways you could destroy the readability of Lisp source is endless, they are always close by, and are even context-dependent. Beginners or people without the focus on readability use those ways rather liberally. The situation is the exact opposite: Python defines the lower bound on the code readability ("Readability counts" -> PEP-8 -> linters -> (lately) `black`) while Lisps, in general, don't even have an authoritative PEP-8 equivalent. On the other hand, Python also has an upper bound on how readable it can be: its syntax is rich, but if you find yourself in a place where it's not rich enough, you're on your own. You could just use the expressive power of the language to hijack the syntax and beat it into shape better suited for your problem, but it will be almost certainly seen as un-Pythonic. On this point, Lisps have a huge advantage, because you can change the language parser on the fly easily, and you can add whatever syntax sugar you need in a couple of lines of a macro. In other words, Lisps give programmers tools for making their code as readable as they want (and are able to) while at the same time allowing them to write "walls of text" (and honestly, that'd be a very polite way of describing some of the Lisp code I've seen) which - in readability - could be one of the worst among many languages I've seen. So, what I want to say here is that it's possible - and not that hard - to write readable Lisp code. Unfortunately, a programmer has to both think of readability when writing and have skills to make their ideas on readability into reality. In effect, yes, there's a lot of Lisp code which is hard to ingest. Some style guides are there or are being created, paredit helps a lot, I'm not aware of any linters yet, but they should start appearing at some point. On the other hand, Lisp code skillfully crafted for readability is rivals (and sometimes surpasses) Python at its best. I'm not sure what Lisp code you've seen, but I assume it was all of the former kind. This is unfortunate. Without knowing what was it you were reading/working with it's hard to recommend anything, but I found examples in "How to Design Programs" quite readable: https://htdp.org/2019-02-24/part_five.html https://htdp.org/2019-02-24/part_five.html and there are also other books and Open Source projects with code worth reading, but I'd have to dig through my bookmarks, which I don't have the time for right now, sorry :( TLDR: Lisps - Schemes, Racket, CL, PicoLisp, Emacs and TXR Lisps to name a few - can be used to write astonishingly readable and to-the-point code, but the languages do absolutely nothing to discourage using them to write the most unreadable mess under the heavens. As for the reasons for this - I've honestly no idea at all.
- kazinator 7y ago
  > Python defines the lower bound on the code readability Ignoring ;... comments for a moment, if we squash a Lisp program into one line and remove all non-essential whitespace, it's possible to recover it into nicely formatted code by machine, more or less. > TLDR: Lisps - Schemes, Racket, CL, PicoLisp, Emacs and TXR Lisps to name a few - can be used to write astonishingly readable and to-the-point code, but the languages do absolutely nothing to discourage using them to write the most unreadable mess under the heavens. As for the reasons for this - I've honestly no idea at all. This view is unbalanced without noting that Javascript, Rust, C, Perl, Java, Scala, Go, Kotlin, ... and a large number of other languages, have the flexible formatting that allows for unreadable code. Ruby, anyone? https://github.com/mame/quine-relay/blob/master/QR.rb https://github.com/mame/quine-relay/blob/master/QR.rb > As for the reasons for this - I've honestly no idea at all. Bad formatting is a bug that is fixable in the actual code (greatly assisted by automation) and a minor social problem in programming that is treatable with education and experience. Therefore, it is nearly a non-issue.
  - klibertp 7y ago
    You're right, of course, on all points (BTW, WTF is with the downvotes??), but they are technicalities of interest to lispers. I omitted these because I wanted to present a convincing argument that fnord123 simply had bad luck and encountered bad Lisp code. And that there's a lot of good, readable code written in s-exps out there. The resistance to s-exps in the general population of programmers is bad "news" (if something 50 years old can be called that...) for Lisps. It's hard to fight it in general terms. Pointing out that C, JS, PERL, etc. are often much worse in terms of readability - while obviously true - doesn't really help in convincing someone to look at s-exps differently. This is why I chose Python for comparison and tried to present a positive argument, saying that you can write code "even more readable than Python at its best" in Lisp. I ignored automatic formatting because it's not part of the language, but of tooling. The problem with tooling is that not everyone uses it. I've had a "pleasure" of working with a 50+ kloc Clojure code base written mostly by C programmers who didn't know or care about formatting tools - honestly, it was a nightmare. Of course, each file could be automatically reformatted into something sensible, but the fact that it was written the way it was and the language did nothing to prevent that still stands. In Python, you at least would get the indentation right. Readability is a hard problem in general. You're right that it's also a matter of education in the community. You're right that it's almost negligible a problem for lispers themselves, as they know how to reformat the code automatically with a single key press. It is a problem, though, for people who come into contact with Lisp code for the first time. I wanted to convince fnord123 that it's not the syntax itself, but rather how it is used that's a problem - like with every other kind of syntax out there, by the way. I'd be extremely happy if he reconsidered and tried to read some of the better-written s-exps based code.

klibertp 7y ago

> My experience is with s-expressions being a wall of text. That's sad, but unfortunately not that rare. Making a Lisp readable is not as easy as doing so in Python. In my experience, Lisp code written by an experienced lisper who cares about readability can often be much more readable than well-written Python (assuming equal levels of proficiency in their respective languages). On the other hand, the number of ways you could destroy the readability of Lisp source is endless, they are always close by, and are even context-dependent. Beginners or people without the focus on readability use those ways rather liberally. The situation is the exact opposite: Python defines the lower bound on the code readability ("Readability counts" -> PEP-8 -> linters -> (lately) `black`) while Lisps, in general, don't even have an authoritative PEP-8 equivalent. On the other hand, Python also has an upper bound on how readable it can be: its syntax is rich, but if you find yourself in a place where it's not rich enough, you're on your own. You could just use the expressive power of the language to hijack the syntax and beat it into shape better suited for your problem, but it will be almost certainly seen as un-Pythonic. On this point, Lisps have a huge advantage, because you can change the language parser on the fly easily, and you can add whatever syntax sugar you need in a couple of lines of a macro. In other words, Lisps give programmers tools for making their code as readable as they want (and are able to) while at the same time allowing them to write "walls of text" (and honestly, that'd be a very polite way of describing some of the Lisp code I've seen) which - in readability - could be one of the worst among many languages I've seen. So, what I want to say here is that it's possible - and not that hard - to write readable Lisp code. Unfortunately, a programmer has to both think of readability when writing and have skills to make their ideas on readability into reality. In effect, yes, there's a lot of Lisp code which is hard to ingest. Some style guides are there or are being created, paredit helps a lot, I'm not aware of any linters yet, but they should start appearing at some point. On the other hand, Lisp code skillfully crafted for readability is rivals (and sometimes surpasses) Python at its best. I'm not sure what Lisp code you've seen, but I assume it was all of the former kind. This is unfortunate. Without knowing what was it you were reading/working with it's hard to recommend anything, but I found examples in "How to Design Programs" quite readable: https://htdp.org/2019-02-24/part_five.html https://htdp.org/2019-02-24/part_five.html and there are also other books and Open Source projects with code worth reading, but I'd have to dig through my bookmarks, which I don't have the time for right now, sorry :( TLDR: Lisps - Schemes, Racket, CL, PicoLisp, Emacs and TXR Lisps to name a few - can be used to write astonishingly readable and to-the-point code, but the languages do absolutely nothing to discourage using them to write the most unreadable mess under the heavens. As for the reasons for this - I've honestly no idea at all.

kazinator 7y ago
> Python defines the lower bound on the code readability Ignoring ;... comments for a moment, if we squash a Lisp program into one line and remove all non-essential whitespace, it's possible to recover it into nicely formatted code by machine, more or less. > TLDR: Lisps - Schemes, Racket, CL, PicoLisp, Emacs and TXR Lisps to name a few - can be used to write astonishingly readable and to-the-point code, but the languages do absolutely nothing to discourage using them to write the most unreadable mess under the heavens. As for the reasons for this - I've honestly no idea at all. This view is unbalanced without noting that Javascript, Rust, C, Perl, Java, Scala, Go, Kotlin, ... and a large number of other languages, have the flexible formatting that allows for unreadable code. Ruby, anyone? https://github.com/mame/quine-relay/blob/master/QR.rb https://github.com/mame/quine-relay/blob/master/QR.rb > As for the reasons for this - I've honestly no idea at all. Bad formatting is a bug that is fixable in the actual code (greatly assisted by automation) and a minor social problem in programming that is treatable with education and experience. Therefore, it is nearly a non-issue.
- klibertp 7y ago
  You're right, of course, on all points (BTW, WTF is with the downvotes??), but they are technicalities of interest to lispers. I omitted these because I wanted to present a convincing argument that fnord123 simply had bad luck and encountered bad Lisp code. And that there's a lot of good, readable code written in s-exps out there. The resistance to s-exps in the general population of programmers is bad "news" (if something 50 years old can be called that...) for Lisps. It's hard to fight it in general terms. Pointing out that C, JS, PERL, etc. are often much worse in terms of readability - while obviously true - doesn't really help in convincing someone to look at s-exps differently. This is why I chose Python for comparison and tried to present a positive argument, saying that you can write code "even more readable than Python at its best" in Lisp. I ignored automatic formatting because it's not part of the language, but of tooling. The problem with tooling is that not everyone uses it. I've had a "pleasure" of working with a 50+ kloc Clojure code base written mostly by C programmers who didn't know or care about formatting tools - honestly, it was a nightmare. Of course, each file could be automatically reformatted into something sensible, but the fact that it was written the way it was and the language did nothing to prevent that still stands. In Python, you at least would get the indentation right. Readability is a hard problem in general. You're right that it's also a matter of education in the community. You're right that it's almost negligible a problem for lispers themselves, as they know how to reformat the code automatically with a single key press. It is a problem, though, for people who come into contact with Lisp code for the first time. I wanted to convince fnord123 that it's not the syntax itself, but rather how it is used that's a problem - like with every other kind of syntax out there, by the way. I'd be extremely happy if he reconsidered and tried to read some of the better-written s-exps based code.