🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <602@smds.UUCP> sw@smds.UUCP (Stephen E. Witham) writes:

(hopefully not taken too much out of context).
   But Lisp syntax doesn't transfer easily to the unconscious.
   And still your eyes can't learn it very well.
I would be interested in some data backing up these assertions. At
this point it is just you and I saying "no you cant! yes you can!".
Unfortunately I don't have any data backing up my assertions other
than I have helped teach scheme for several years, as well as
programming in it, and have not noticed the things you are describing.

   I write:
   > ...I do most of my code reading on a terminal in an emacs buffer so that 
   > I can use all the commands when needed. I very rarely print out Scheme 
   > code and look at it on paper.

   This sounds like a REAL INTERESTING point.  Do you mean you use the
   editor to step between arguments and to find matching parens?  If so,
   you're FEELING your way, or maybe more like WALKING, around the code--
   in any case, something kinesthetic is going on...COOL!  But notice how
   it's like groping in the dark (in a well-labeled, tree-structured space, 
   (wasn't that a short story by Hemingway?) I grant you).  In other words, 
   Lisp syntax is no help to your EYES, but with emacs as a CANE...  This 
   probably has some great implications for user interfaces for blind people!

I think you are taking my point slightly incorrectly. Suppose you are
programming in language X, and have a big huge function (several
pages, full of nested loops etc.). Can your eyes parse it? I use the
editor to help me with cases like that, and to make sure that parens
balance. I do not consider myself "feeling my way". I have a good tool
and I use it.

j

--
"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