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Parentheses are only needed with infix notation. Pure prefix (like Unlambda) or pure postfix notation (like Forth) are unambiguous without them. Whether the res
by SAI_Peregrinus 6y ago
Parentheses are only needed with infix notation. Pure prefix (like Unlambda) or pure postfix notation (like Forth) are unambiguous without them. Whether the resulting language is easy to understand is a far more complicated question.
- pavel_lishin 6y ago> Whether the resulting language is easy to understand is a far more complicated question. That's why I hate them. A programming language is primarily meant to be read by people. If I see something like thing noun object What's going on there? Is thing a function? Is noun? Am I passing two arguments to thing, or am I passing the result of invoking the function noun with the argument object? Hell, if I have something like verb action it certainly looks like I'm calling a function called verb with the argument action, but is the argument I'm giving to verb the actual function action, or the result of evaluating action? Yes, in any given language there's probably a single answer to all of these, but I bet it varies from language to language, and I'd really, really, really rather not waste calories by having my brain try to figure it out.