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3 points by zck 4194 days ago | link | parent

I do agree that s-expressions shouldn't be set in stone. But I'm not sure that these specific suggestions are useful. Maybe I'm being a Luddite in regards to change.

I guess I'm on board with the curly-infix expressions for math. Maybe. I do hate having to mentally parse through lines like

  {{1 * 2} + {3 / 4}}
To get "oh, this is adding two things together". But ok. Maybe. But the minute I have to distinguish between the form

  ... fun(arg1 arg2 arg3) ...
and

  ... fun (arg1 arg2 arg3) ...
I'm done. Granted, I haven't actually used neoteric expressions -- and I should try them -- but until I do, this style looks much less readable to me. I disagree that it's painless; it seems actually quite painful to me. It sure is closer to Algol-style coding, but it's just asking you to confuse the two. And that's easily done.


1 point by akkartik 4194 days ago | link

Fair enough. You don't typically see the no space style in lisp, so it stands out for me. But you're right that it's not as cut and dried as I thought.

I actually dislike the curlies far more :)

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