4 ms·

A cool project... but instead I suggest to everyone who uses Lisp, just set your editor's syntax highlighter to make the parentheses fade into the background co

A cool project... but instead I suggest to everyone who uses Lisp, just set your editor's syntax highlighter to make the parentheses fade into the background color almost completely. They're still there, for correctness, structured editing, and ease of sharing with others; but they don't stand out.

retrac 4y ago
Lisp also really benefits from an editor that colourizes ( ) in matching pairs. Even C benefits from colour-matching {} in my experience. I'm surprised it's not more common.
- azeirah 4y ago
  I believe Jetbrains IDEs do this by default for certain languages, I know HTML for sure. That, or I have a plugin running in the background for years without me noticing.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
  I got used to Lisp before I knew rainbow-parens were a thing. Then I tried it and found it added nothing. I'm sure it would be helpful as a learning tool though. What I really can't recommend enough is paredit. It ensures balanced parens by always creating a close to an open. Typing a close just jumps you past the nearest close after the cursor. Along with the thing where the cursor momentarily jumps to the open paren when going past a close paren. When I need to add another expression to a scope, I just hit close paren until I see the jump to the relevant open paren then hit enter. I do know some older(than me) Lisp programmers who even find paredit excessive though. Eventually, I found that when reading lisp I almost never actually look at the parens at all, only the indentation.
  - harperlee 4y ago
    I was surprised with the lukewarm reception parinfer (which ties indentation with parens, in an automated way, and is compatible with paredit actions) had on the lisp world. I found it invaluable, especially for newcomers. It completely takes out parens-as-a-risk out of the question, effectively turning lisps into formally indentation-based languages, a la python (which is to some extent how everybody reads lisp).
    - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
      I haven't looked at parinfer, but in general, in the Lisp community parentheses aren't really viewed as a problem to be solved. It's just a quirk of the language that requires a a few simple methods to deal with, and then it becomes completely natural, even seen as elegant. With things like BARF/SLURP-SEXP, to move expressions in and out of their parentheses, KILL-SEXP to delete a sexp to the buffer, adding a numeric prefix to open paren to wrap n expressions in parentheses, and ofc NEXT/PREV-SEXP. The language becomes a joy to edit, because everything conforms to this syntax you can do pretty much everything you want with this small handful of commands(all provided by paredit). As I mentioned in another comment, there is essentially a grieving process as a newly enlightened lisper comes to terms with the fact that other languages haven't caught on to this clearly(to the lisper) perfect and superior notation. So probably parinfer is solving a problem that most Lisp programmers aren't looking to solve. That would be my guess anyway. All this is not to pass judgement on your for finding it helpful, and I certainly agree that having more tools for beginners to get used to editing S-expressions is helpful.
      - harperlee 4y ago
        > So probably parinfer is solving a problem that most Lisp programmers aren't looking to solve. That would be my guess anyway. It mainly helps adoption, so in a way you are right, it’s not a problem for current users… but it is a problem for industry (as much as I deplore the reality that such a superficial familiarity bump detracts so many people).
- filoeleven 4y ago
  This was recently enabled for Javascript in VS Code, and was a welcome sight. (The Calva plugin for Clojure already had it, naturally.)
  - hoseja 4y ago
    And there's been some nice blogs about the engineering challenge of doing that right.

retrac 4y ago

Lisp also really benefits from an editor that colourizes ( ) in matching pairs. Even C benefits from colour-matching {} in my experience. I'm surprised it's not more common.

azeirah 4y ago
I believe Jetbrains IDEs do this by default for certain languages, I know HTML for sure. That, or I have a plugin running in the background for years without me noticing.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
I got used to Lisp before I knew rainbow-parens were a thing. Then I tried it and found it added nothing. I'm sure it would be helpful as a learning tool though. What I really can't recommend enough is paredit. It ensures balanced parens by always creating a close to an open. Typing a close just jumps you past the nearest close after the cursor. Along with the thing where the cursor momentarily jumps to the open paren when going past a close paren. When I need to add another expression to a scope, I just hit close paren until I see the jump to the relevant open paren then hit enter. I do know some older(than me) Lisp programmers who even find paredit excessive though. Eventually, I found that when reading lisp I almost never actually look at the parens at all, only the indentation.
- harperlee 4y ago
  I was surprised with the lukewarm reception parinfer (which ties indentation with parens, in an automated way, and is compatible with paredit actions) had on the lisp world. I found it invaluable, especially for newcomers. It completely takes out parens-as-a-risk out of the question, effectively turning lisps into formally indentation-based languages, a la python (which is to some extent how everybody reads lisp).
  - mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y ago
    I haven't looked at parinfer, but in general, in the Lisp community parentheses aren't really viewed as a problem to be solved. It's just a quirk of the language that requires a a few simple methods to deal with, and then it becomes completely natural, even seen as elegant. With things like BARF/SLURP-SEXP, to move expressions in and out of their parentheses, KILL-SEXP to delete a sexp to the buffer, adding a numeric prefix to open paren to wrap n expressions in parentheses, and ofc NEXT/PREV-SEXP. The language becomes a joy to edit, because everything conforms to this syntax you can do pretty much everything you want with this small handful of commands(all provided by paredit). As I mentioned in another comment, there is essentially a grieving process as a newly enlightened lisper comes to terms with the fact that other languages haven't caught on to this clearly(to the lisper) perfect and superior notation. So probably parinfer is solving a problem that most Lisp programmers aren't looking to solve. That would be my guess anyway. All this is not to pass judgement on your for finding it helpful, and I certainly agree that having more tools for beginners to get used to editing S-expressions is helpful.
    - harperlee 4y ago
      > So probably parinfer is solving a problem that most Lisp programmers aren't looking to solve. That would be my guess anyway. It mainly helps adoption, so in a way you are right, it’s not a problem for current users… but it is a problem for industry (as much as I deplore the reality that such a superficial familiarity bump detracts so many people).
filoeleven 4y ago
This was recently enabled for Javascript in VS Code, and was a welcome sight. (The Calva plugin for Clojure already had it, naturally.)
- hoseja 4y ago
  And there's been some nice blogs about the engineering challenge of doing that right.