🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <591@smds.UUCP> sw@smds.UUCP (Stephen E. Witham) writes:

   [Scheme is good, but not visually graspable]

   The problem with Lisp notation, for my "right brain", is that *every*
   *structure*looks*the*same*.  It's all just forms with arguments.
   With C, there are visual differences between function definitions,
   variable declarations, [...]
   In Lisp or Scheme, in order to tell what type of thing something 
   is, you have to look at the word at the beginning of the expression or 
   special form it's in, know what types of arguments that form takes, and 
   then count down through the arguments.

   [...]

   My main point was, anybody who can say "just syntax" is either ignoring
   the issue of visual clarity, or they have parsers and reference
   manuals built into their corneas.  Perceptual simplicity is hard to
   produce, and Lisp takes a simplistic approach to simplicity.

For me (but of course I am one of those strange Scheme people :^), the
problem is exactly the same but in the other direction. When I look at
languages with more conventional syntax, I have to go through the same
contortions you do. I drag the manual out etc. I accept what you are
saying, but I don't think it implies write-onlyness (perhaps the
problem here is that to me, write-onlyness is a global property which
states that it is ALWAYS hard to read programs in a particular
langauge as opposed to initially hard). 

It seems to me, also, that people do have parsers and reference
manuals in their corneas. Consider reading - do you spell out the
words letter by letter and then parse them into a single word? Or do
you get the "gestalt" all at once? But this is getting much too
philosophical and outside my field :^).

I still think that Scheme/Lisp style syntax is a viable alternative
for more conventional syntaxes(syntaci?). With any syntax there is
going to be an initial period where it seems write-only, and I don't
see that this period is any longer for Scheme/Lisp than other
languages (and my personal experience indicates it is shorter). I
think the general idea of "write-onlyness" for Scheme comes from the
amazing amount of languages with more conventional syntax, the extra
expressive power available, and a sort of "social inertia" to new
things.

John
gateley@rice.edu
--
"I've thought the thoughts of little children and the thoughts of men
 I've thought the thoughts of stupid people who have never been
 so much in love as they should be and got confused too easily
 to fall in love again." The Residents and Renaldo and the Loaf