What you're looking for is called "Python". The parens are your friend. Learn to love them. They are there to remind you that you're building a data structure, not just writing code.
Sean On Dec 18, 2:07 pm, Martin Coxall <pseudo.m...@me.com> wrote: > I had this thought at work, when I should have been working, so please bear > with me if it's nonsense. > > One of the things that always puts people off of Lisp, as we all know, are > the parentheses. Now, many ways have been suggested of doing this in other > Lisps, but have never taken off, mainly due to inertia and a fear of > sacrificing homoiconicity. > > However, I love Clojure, and want to see it really take off. And so I want to > see all barriers to that removed. Also, I think the language is young enough > that seemingly-but-not-really radical proposals can still be sneaked in. > > Let's take this example, since I note that Rich Hickey weighed in in the > comments: > > http://www.innoq.com/blog/st/2009/12/clojurelisp_readability.html > > (apply merge-with + > (pmap count-lines > (partition-all *batch-size* > (line-seq (reader filename))))) > > This little snippet has ten parentheses. And is potentially very unnerving to > a non-lisper. Ten parentheses in four lines seems a lot to most programmers. > > Rich, in the comments, suggests a pipelined style to make the code more > readable: > > (->> (line-seq (reader filename)) > (partition-all *batch-size*) > (pmap count-lines) > (apply merge-with +)) > > I accept that this is more readable because it has less nesting. But it now > has *12* parentheses, more than the original, potentially just as alarming to > the Lispophobes. > > My question is this: why can't we introduce a simple and importantly, > optional 'off-side rule' (much simpler than Haskell's) that allows the reader > to infer many of the parentheses? > > A very simple offside rule could turn the original into: > > apply merge-with + > pmap count-lines > partition-all *batch-size* > line-seq (reader filename) > > With a startling two parentheses and Rich's corrected version into: > > ->> > line-seq (reader filename) > partition-all *batch-size* > pmap count-lines > apply merge-with + > > Also with two. That last example in particular looks splendidly readable. > Almost... monadic. > > The parenthesis inference here is very simple, and could be stated in two > sentences: > > For each line that is not within a vector, and does not have an opening > parenthesis, infer an opening parenthesis at the start of the line. Remember > the level of indentation, and infer a closing parenthesis at the end of the > line *before* the next line whose indentation is the same as or less than the > remembered one. > > My question is: why would such a scheme work/not work, and why would/would > not it be desirable? > > Martin -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
