5 ms·

> learn to appreciate. I don't think so. AFAICT, people do hate parenthesis, no matter how long they use Lips/Scheme. They just simply get used to the clutter.

by esjeon 4y ago

> learn to appreciate. I don't think so. AFAICT, people do hate parenthesis, no matter how long they use Lips/Scheme. They just simply get used to the clutter. Also, when writing code, you can spam ")" to close functions/expressions. It takes only few brain cycles if the editor highlights matching parenthesis. This makes it easier to move code around. Copy-paste-))))))...

phyrex 4y ago
You’re wrong in both points
thrown_22 4y ago
>I don't think so. AFAICT, people do hate parenthesis, no matter how long they use Lips/Scheme. They just simply get used to the clutter. People see trees and not parens. People who complain about parens are still stuck in the "code is text" mind set rather than the "code is a tree" mind set. >Also, when writing code, you can spam ")" to close functions/expressions. It takes only few brain cycles if the editor highlights matching parenthesis. This makes it easier to move code around. Copy-paste-))))))... We've had editors since the 1970s that can take you to where a matching paren is closed. You then copy/paste the whole function without needing to add or remover parens.
- esjeon 4y ago
  > People see trees and not parens. Codes are still text unless you're using tree-based editors. Maintaining tree on text editors requires careful editing and strict practices, which human brains aren't good at. The "tree" will get broken at some point, but, in this school of thought, the recovery strategy is unclear and inconsistent at best. This becomes annoying pretty quickly. The real tree, at the end of the day, is formed by line breaks and indents, not parenthesis. Codes are also for human consumption after all. Now there are two trees to manage - semantic indentation and parenthesis - which is bad. Luckily we can induce parenthesis from the semantic structure, so we only care about the semantics, and naturally trailing ")" becomes completely redundant.
  - thrown_22 4y ago
    >Maintaining tree on text editors requires careful editing and strict practices, which human brains aren't good at. The "tree" will get broken at some point, but, in this school of thought, the recovery strategy is unclear and inconsistent at best. We've had editors that automatically do that since the 70s. Here's a live demo hot from 1986: https://youtu.be/-J_xL4IGhJA?t=2416 https://youtu.be/-J_xL4IGhJA?t=2416 >The real tree, at the end of the day, is formed by line breaks and indents, not parenthesis. It isn't. You're not the type of person who lisp is for, which is fine. There are lots of languages suited for people like you. But I'd be curious to know what language you think uses nothing but line breaks and indents to describe its AST.
    - esjeon 4y ago
      > Here's a live demo hot from 1986: https://youtu.be/-J_xL4IGhJA?t=2416 https://youtu.be/-J_xL4IGhJA?t=2416 The process in the video still perfectly aligns with my description. Actually, I reached that conclusion by observing people writing Lisp code. That is, when you're writing Lisp code, that's exactly what people next you would see, no matter what you think. Also, trailing ")"s are clearly a burden, as people do spend their brain cycles to properly match them. > It isn't. You're not the type of person who lisp is for You sound like you're right in the middle of Lisp fever, which is fine. Everyone goes through that. > But I'd be curious to know what language you think uses nothing but line breaks and indents to describe its AST. You simply didn't get what I was saying. Even when all the parens were stripped off from a Lisp code, you can easily reinsert parens based on line breaks and indents. So people rely more on indentations for correctly putting parens, rather than being cautions w/ every single editing operation.
      - thrown_22 4y ago
        >That is, when you're writing Lisp code, that's exactly what people next you would see, no matter what you think. People don't match them. The editor does. Computers are very good at this. Code editing isn't a spectator sport where you can judge how easy something is by watching someone else do it. Try par-edit-mode from emacs, it's a tree editor in a text editor. You'd have your mind blown from this piece of technology from the 90s that uses nothing but plain text to edit a tree using parens. >You simply didn't get what I was saying. Even when all the parens were stripped off from a Lisp code, you can easily reinsert parens based on line breaks and indents. So people rely more on indentations for correctly putting parens, rather than being cautions w/ every single editing operation. Really? So given f a b which of (f a b) (f (a b)) ((f a) b) did I strip the parens from?

by esjeon 4y ago

phyrex 4y ago

You’re wrong in both points

thrown_22 4y ago

>I don't think so. AFAICT, people do hate parenthesis, no matter how long they use Lips/Scheme. They just simply get used to the clutter. People see trees and not parens. People who complain about parens are still stuck in the "code is text" mind set rather than the "code is a tree" mind set. >Also, when writing code, you can spam ")" to close functions/expressions. It takes only few brain cycles if the editor highlights matching parenthesis. This makes it easier to move code around. Copy-paste-))))))... We've had editors since the 1970s that can take you to where a matching paren is closed. You then copy/paste the whole function without needing to add or remover parens.

esjeon 4y ago
> People see trees and not parens. Codes are still text unless you're using tree-based editors. Maintaining tree on text editors requires careful editing and strict practices, which human brains aren't good at. The "tree" will get broken at some point, but, in this school of thought, the recovery strategy is unclear and inconsistent at best. This becomes annoying pretty quickly. The real tree, at the end of the day, is formed by line breaks and indents, not parenthesis. Codes are also for human consumption after all. Now there are two trees to manage - semantic indentation and parenthesis - which is bad. Luckily we can induce parenthesis from the semantic structure, so we only care about the semantics, and naturally trailing ")" becomes completely redundant.
- thrown_22 4y ago
  >Maintaining tree on text editors requires careful editing and strict practices, which human brains aren't good at. The "tree" will get broken at some point, but, in this school of thought, the recovery strategy is unclear and inconsistent at best. We've had editors that automatically do that since the 70s. Here's a live demo hot from 1986: https://youtu.be/-J_xL4IGhJA?t=2416 https://youtu.be/-J_xL4IGhJA?t=2416 >The real tree, at the end of the day, is formed by line breaks and indents, not parenthesis. It isn't. You're not the type of person who lisp is for, which is fine. There are lots of languages suited for people like you. But I'd be curious to know what language you think uses nothing but line breaks and indents to describe its AST.
  - esjeon 4y ago
    > Here's a live demo hot from 1986: https://youtu.be/-J_xL4IGhJA?t=2416 https://youtu.be/-J_xL4IGhJA?t=2416 The process in the video still perfectly aligns with my description. Actually, I reached that conclusion by observing people writing Lisp code. That is, when you're writing Lisp code, that's exactly what people next you would see, no matter what you think. Also, trailing ")"s are clearly a burden, as people do spend their brain cycles to properly match them. > It isn't. You're not the type of person who lisp is for You sound like you're right in the middle of Lisp fever, which is fine. Everyone goes through that. > But I'd be curious to know what language you think uses nothing but line breaks and indents to describe its AST. You simply didn't get what I was saying. Even when all the parens were stripped off from a Lisp code, you can easily reinsert parens based on line breaks and indents. So people rely more on indentations for correctly putting parens, rather than being cautions w/ every single editing operation.
    - thrown_22 4y ago
      >That is, when you're writing Lisp code, that's exactly what people next you would see, no matter what you think. People don't match them. The editor does. Computers are very good at this. Code editing isn't a spectator sport where you can judge how easy something is by watching someone else do it. Try par-edit-mode from emacs, it's a tree editor in a text editor. You'd have your mind blown from this piece of technology from the 90s that uses nothing but plain text to edit a tree using parens. >You simply didn't get what I was saying. Even when all the parens were stripped off from a Lisp code, you can easily reinsert parens based on line breaks and indents. So people rely more on indentations for correctly putting parens, rather than being cautions w/ every single editing operation. Really? So given f a b which of (f a b) (f (a b)) ((f a) b) did I strip the parens from?