"C-like" syntax for Lisp in less than 100 lines of code
in [Lisp]
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From: Peter Keller on 23 Apr 2010 17:32 Jorge Gajon <gajon(a)gajon.org> wrote: > At first I found the exact same bugs you mention, but with the > modifications that I linked to in the previous message they are fixed. Oh, I have the maintainer's email address, maybe I'll forward to him your link so he can see what's up. > Well, one thing is drinking the kool-aid, and other is using what's > best. I believe Vim's editing model is a big deal to just let it go. I thought the same way, but in the end, I realized that both tools allow me to "do the same things" with the text, so in essence the only difference was what I was actually typing. After a while, I was able to remap quite effectively the higher order text manipulations my brain wanted to do into different concrete finger movements. I thought it'd be horrible to do, and for the first 3 weeks, it was. :) > And one thing that I *must* really be able to use is C-X C-N and C-X C-P > in insert mode. Turns out that M-/ is a good enough completion for me that I'm perfectly happy with it. There are various method of tab completion I haven't all figured out, but they can provide you with the choices and whatnot. As for tags, M-. (if I recall) does something intelligent. SLIME itself has some acceptable methods to go to a caller or a callee of a function or identify other entities and their definitions. I've only used it in Lisp and it worked well for me. > Anyway, I have not been able to spend more time with Emacs recently, but > it is definitely in my to-do list. The problem is that there's not > enough time available, which is also my concern on walking down this > path. Eh, I say simply start writing code in it and only figure out the things you absolutely need to figure out because it prevents you from writing code. 99% of the time whatever I googled had like 4 pages devoted to how to make emacs do it. Everything else can be put off. :) I was annoyed that I had to learn another tool, but my brain surprised me and remapped everything. I bashed emacs with a stick when I just couldn't change my behavior. It worked out. > Thank you for sharing your impressions and the customizations that you > have done in your .emacs file. No problem. Have a nice day. Later, -pete
From: Pillsy on 21 Apr 2010 10:04 On Apr 20, 11:43 pm, Günther Thomsen <guenth...(a)gmail.com> wrote: [...] > This comes up every now and then. I'm not sure whether this > parenthesis-paralysis is actually a real problem or an often-repeated > myth. I'm increasingly convinced that parentheses are the fundamental reason that Lisp isn't a lot more popular than it is. Syntax really matters to people, and the reasons it matters are rooted in subjective judgements about "prettiness" or "ease of reading". It so happens that a lot of programmers hate the parentheses for subjective reasons that simply don't apply to Lisp users because if they applied, we wouldn't be Lisp users. > In any case, Dylan did away with the prefix-syntax and that wasn't > enough to make it popular (but of course, there might have been other > reasons or no reasons why it failed to gain popularity). Sure, but it was pretty much not marketed. Counterfactuals are tough, but I've always thought that if Dylan, rather than Java, had been the language that Sun decided to throw all that weight behind, today everybody would be complaining about it because their boss makes them use it. [...] > Not sure about that. But why not start with a good book and classic > Scheme? I think Common Lisp is an easier language to learn than Scheme, with its richer set of imperative constructs and much better support for IO and object orientation. Learning Scheme involves drinking a bunch of Kool-Aid, and the good Scheme books are at least as much about selling you that Kool-Aid as they are about teaching you a new language. Cheers, Pillsy
From: Tamas K Papp on 21 Apr 2010 10:51 On Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:04:14 -0700, Pillsy wrote: > On Apr 20, 11:43 pm, Günther Thomsen <guenth...(a)gmail.com> wrote: [...] >> This comes up every now and then. I'm not sure whether this >> parenthesis-paralysis is actually a real problem or an often-repeated >> myth. > > I'm increasingly convinced that parentheses are the fundamental reason > that Lisp isn't a lot more popular than it is. Syntax really matters to That's like saying that the requirement to engage in abstract thinking is the fundamental reason that makes (serious) mathematics unpopular. Maybe. But there is nothing you can do about it: you can't make it "easier" without making it uninteresting. Likewise, it does not really make much sense to talk about how popular Lisp would be without parentheses. Speculations on how fundamental the SEXP syntax is to Lisp (and why Dylan failed etc) aside, no one has demonstrated the existence of an equally powerful Lisp with a more "conventional" syntax, so what the experiment/counterfactual would be is not clear. If someone invented a Lisp without parenthesis that is as powerful as eg CL, we would be able to talk about whether the parens make Lisp unpopular. Naturally, I am not holding my breath :-) Personally, I grew to like Lisp syntax. But maybe this is a preference that is heterogeneous in the population: people who like the syntax or are willing to tolerate it for the extra power become Lisp programmers, the rest don't. Not much we can do about this. > I think Common Lisp is an easier language to learn than Scheme, with its > richer set of imperative constructs and much better support for IO and > object orientation. Learning Scheme involves drinking a bunch of > Kool-Aid, and the good Scheme books are at least as much about selling > you that Kool-Aid as they are about teaching you a new language. Agreed. I almost gave up on Lisp because I started with books on Scheme. It was years later when I learned that there are people who write practical programs in (heavily extended dialects of) Scheme. Tamas
From: Pillsy on 21 Apr 2010 12:59 On Apr 21, 10:51 am, Tamas K Papp <tkp...(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Wed, 21 Apr 2010 07:04:14 -0700, Pillsy wrote: [...] > > I'm increasingly convinced that parentheses are the fundamental reason > > that Lisp isn't a lot more popular than it is. > That's like saying that the requirement to engage in abstract thinking > is the fundamental reason that makes (serious) mathematics unpopular. > Maybe. I don't think this is a good analogy. Programming languages provide specialized notations, and Lisp, by specializing its notation to make metaprogramming convenient, forgoes some other possibilities that make doing other things particularly convenient. > But there is nothing you can do about it: you can't make it "easier" > without making it uninteresting. I think there's an engineering trade-off between ease of metaprogramming and provision of syntactic sugar. A smallish number of languages and users gravitate towards the Lisp end of the spectrum and a much larger group of languages users gravitate towards the everything-else end of the spectrum, and there's virtually nothing in the middle. There are only a few attempts, and if you only have a few attempts, the whole class of languages is a lot more likely to get wiped out for unrelated economic reasons (like Dylan) or unrelated technical blunders (like Mathematica). [...] > If someone invented a Lisp without parenthesis that is as powerful as > eg CL, we would be able to talk about whether the parens make Lisp > unpopular. Naturally, I am not holding my breath :-) I think this sells CL short, because it has a lot of things beyond parenthesized syntax that make it a worthwhile language. Any idiot can write a Lisp---writing toy Lisp interpreters is a common exercise in undergraduate CS classes---but writing a *decent* Lisp is much harder. Someone can break new and interesting ground in terms of allowing more syntax while enabling structured manipulation of source code, but that doesn't mean that they won't totally botch the rest of their language. The cool syntactical possibilities are only going to go so far if your IO and error handling mechanisms are completely busted and your only implementation is a slow-like-molasses-on-Quaaludes interpreter. > Personally, I grew to like Lisp syntax. I did too. Actually, I discovered that I liked it almost immediately. OTOH, I find C-descended syntaxes to be very uncomfortable. Part of the reason I'm so convinced of the role that personal preference plays in this is that my own preferences seem to be so radically different from most other programmers. Cheers, Pillsy
From: Tim Bradshaw on 21 Apr 2010 13:08
On 2010-04-21 17:59:34 +0100, Pillsy said: > I think there's an engineering trade-off between ease of > metaprogramming and provision of syntactic sugar. I think that's a good summary. |