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Sweet-expressions: A readable format for Lisp-like languages

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Re: Sweet-expressions: A readable format for Lisp-like languages

#81

Post by euccastro »

derefr wrote: post #41
euccastro wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also, people with 'no experience in the language', but with 'general programming experience' will be primed with the conventions of mainstream languages and biased against s-expressions. (Btw, it's J ef Raskin.)

By "general programming experience," I didn't mean " mainstream programming experience," but rather "having been given a survey of techniques for programming in iterative, functional, OOP, declarative/constraint-based, concatenative, etc. languages, without having learned a single one." In other words, someone who was taught to program for the purposes of the test.

How do you learn to program without learning any programming languages?

Re: Sweet-expressions: A readable format for Lisp-like languages

#82

Post by aerique »

merijnv wrote: post #70
aerique wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you from a maths background? I'm not and having played with Haskell a little the syntax is a real turn-off for me. For me Lisp is a lot more readable.

No, I have a CS background, my first languages were Java and Python. I only started looking into the math related to programming languages after Haskell. Do you have any examples of. Which syntax makes it unclear to you? I think the uniformity of Lisp syntax makes it hard to scan and find the various parts I'm interested in. Especially the quote operators can be nefariously easy to gloss over...

I guess it's just a matter of experience then, I find Lisp pretty easy to scan through. So we can debate this until the end of time apparently. :-)

With regard to Haskell the original post eloquently sum up most of my problems with it (and then so more).

edit: Haha, I thought this thread was attached to the "Lisk" topic (Lisp syntax for Haskell) that's what I meant with "original post" above.

Re: Sweet-expressions: A readable format for Lisp-like languages

#83

Post by merijnv »

aerique wrote: post #82
merijnv wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I have a CS background, my first languages were Java and Python. I only started looking into the math related to programming languages after Haskell. Do you have any examples of. Which syntax makes it unclear to you? I think the uniformity of Lisp syntax makes it hard to scan and find the various parts I'm interested in. Especially the quote operators can be nefariously easy to gloss over...

I guess it's just a matter of experience then, I find Lisp pretty easy to scan through. So we can debate this until the end of time apparently. :-) With regard to Haskell the original post eloquently sum up most of my problems with it (and then so more). edit: Haha, I thought this thread was attached to the "Lisk" topic (Lisp syntax for Haskell) that's what I meant with "original post" above.

Ah, I saw the Lisk topic, and while agree that Haskell's very exact whitespace could be annoying without a good editor (mine automatically indents correctly anyway so I never have problems), if its such a big deal you could just use {} and semi-colons as that is valid syntax as well. You only have to do exact whitespacing if you don't use those, although it might be easier to just use a decent editor instead.

Re: Sweet-expressions: A readable format for Lisp-like languages

#84

Post by dfox »

Zak wrote: post #3

Somebody has invented a more conventional-looking syntax for Lisp every couple years since John McCarthy first suggested M-expressions. Nobody[0] has ever cared enough to use any of them. People who "get" Lisp get over any aversion to the syntax, and usually even come to appreciate it. People who can't get over the syntax never actually get Lisp. [0] For large values of nobody

As for nobody: Cadence SKILL is Lisp/Scheme that uses syntax that reasonably looks like M-expressions (+ some infix hacks). And I think that that counts as pretty substantial body of Lisp code.
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