4 ms·

Here is why that reasoning is wrong: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9533139/what-would-clojure-lose-by-switching-away-from-leading-parenthesis-like-dylan-

Here is why that reasoning is wrong: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9533139/what-would-clojure-lose-by-switching-away-from-leading-parenthesis-like-dylan-j https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9533139/what-would-cloju... The point is that macros become much harder once you move away from leading parenthesis. Apple tried your reasoning with the Dylan language in the 90s - and the Dylan language died.

lisper 6y ago
Dylan did not die because of any technical deficiency. Dylan died because Apple management decided to kill the project and so it never achieved critical mass. Programming languages never live or die on their technical merits. Javascript is a hot mess, and yet it is one of the most popular languages in the world. Also: > macros become much harder once you move away from leading parenthesis That is not really true. You do lose the backquote syntax, but that is only useful for writing the simplest most trivial macros. That turns out to be the kind what most people write and so backquote is a big deal, but if you want to write more complex macros (e.g. cl-who) then backquote becomes less useful and the surface syntax becomes less relevant.
tom_mellior 6y ago
> The point is that macros become much harder once you move away from leading parenthesis. This is... an extraordinary claim. Prolog uses foo(hello, world) syntax (note the comma) and has no problem with macros or any other manipulation of such terms. Note that there are longer, better reasoned, and higher voted answers to that StackOverflow question than the accepted answer which opts for "macros would become more difficult" FUD.