11–20 of 81 posts
This argument/response comes up every time.... Argument: "Lisp has too many parentheses. It's unreadable." Response: "It's conceptually elegant that everything is parentheses." This doesn't address the real point -- you can't read it well. You do get advantages for macros and symbolic processing. But the cost in readability is still there.
By "you", don't you mean you?
"Dorsal" means "top", like where the dorsal fin on a fish is. It doesn't even remotely mean "everything except the front". (The belly of a fish is "ventral".)
"Dorsal" means "top", like where the dorsal fin on a fish is. It doesn't even remotely mean "everything except the front". (The belly of a fish is "ventral".)
Wikipedia has a wall of text by way of explanation:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location#Wh...
"Dorsal" means "top", like where the dorsal fin on a fish is. It doesn't even remotely mean "everything except the front". (The belly of a fish is "ventral".)
There's an incongruity between animal and human anatomy. In humans, dorsal does indeed mean back, not top. Wikipedia has a wall of text by way of explanation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anatomical_terms_of_location#Wh...
Anyone manage to build a Lisp that used semantic indentation (like Python)? You could make it optional and just have it function as a preprocessor that generates the real thing.
It hides the parentheses, and emacs by default will indent your lisp correctly. Just like the real thing (except you can't edit while in UnParenMode...minor issue).
I do enjoy the irony in commenting with "can we get rid of the paretheses" on a post explaining why the parentheses are not important. When you truly understand lisp, you will no longer see the parentheses. They aren't real.
This argument/response comes up every time.... Argument: "Lisp has too many parentheses. It's unreadable." Response: "It's conceptually elegant that everything is parentheses." This doesn't address the real point -- you can't read it well. You do get advantages for macros and symbolic processing. But the cost in readability is still there.
Here's a DSL I'm working on for CouchDB:
(defmapping post
:pre-commit timestamp
:fields {:author-id :string
:title :string
:created :date-time
:modified :date-time
:body :string
:tags [:string]
:meta {:copyright :string
:href :string}})
In constrast my favorite Python lib for CouchDB work looks like this:
creators = ListField(DictField(Mapping.build(
name = DictField(Mapping.build(
name_authority = TextField(),
name_authority_id = IntegerField(),
display_string = TextField()
)),
user_id = IntegerField(),
roles = ListField(TextField()),
attrs = ListField(TextField()),
xts = ListField(TextField()),
)))
This argument/response comes up every time.... Argument: "Lisp has too many parentheses. It's unreadable." Response: "It's conceptually elegant that everything is parentheses." This doesn't address the real point -- you can't read it well. You do get advantages for macros and symbolic processing. But the cost in readability is still there.
Gaaah, knock off the CAPSLOCK and the machismo, please. Also, you don't need to invent backcronyms for CAR/CDR, they're now called first/rest. Having said that, I really like the presentation of your blog, nice typography. And after skimming your book[1] in progress, and noting your obvious theoretical bent and taste for rigor, I can only anticipate to read more of your future posts (latch on to something "obscure" l…