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I believe it was Chris Okasaki who discovered that the thing that helped neophyte programmers go from not getting it to getting it in terms of blocks and scopes

I believe it was Chris Okasaki who discovered that the thing that helped neophyte programmers go from not getting it to getting it in terms of blocks and scopes was semantic indentation. Lisp's parens were originally a convenience notation for McCarthy's idea of lists, but not intended as something people actually code in. For most programmers they are, as they say in the Rust community, not very ergonomic. Semantic indentation is a win, and will be good for the Lisp family. Embrace change or get left behind.

jacknews 2y ago
"I believe it was Chris Okasaki who discovered that the thing that helped neophyte programmers go from not getting it to getting it in terms of blocks and scopes was semantic indentation." I don't believe a word, and it's not my experience, the indentation doesn't need to be semantic at all. Meanwhile cut&paste, which is heavily used when learning is broken, it's hard to match up indentation levels lines apart, and even tabs-vs-spaces is suddenly a thing again. "Embrace change or get left behind." Don't be ridiculous.