Oops.. left two parentheses out in my Java code. Guess that just furthers my
point. :)
> List<Object> newObjects = ArrayList<Object>();
On Dec 19, 2009, at 12:04 PM, Joseph Smith wrote:
> Very abstract java example (as concise as possible):
>
> List<Object> processList(List<Object> oldObjects)
> {
> List<Object> newObjects = ArrayList<Object>;
> for(Object object : oldObjects)
> {
> newObjects.add(manipulate(object));
> }
> return newObjects;
> }
>
> Clojure equivalent:
>
> (defn processList [#^Object list]
> (for [object list] (manipulate object)))
>
> I realize this is a very pedestrian example, but a couple things to note (and
> I'm sure mentioned previously):
> - Lisps are much more expressive, in general
> - Compared to most languages there is significantly less syntactic noise-
> There is "just enough" syntax to delimit the code.
> - The code is a data-structure (homoiconicity), and it is very easy to see
> where the expression begins and ends (this is good for readability, code
> formatters, etc)
> - Lisps are very consistent- no special code formatting rules to remember.
> Despite what seems like a large number of parentheses there are far less
> 'control' characters.
> I.e. instead of : . ; ( ) { } you have ( ), and usually fewer of them.
> - Most programmers rely on their IDE/Editor or indentation to make sure they
> are matching curly-braces correctly,
> which is made harder by blocks of code that frequently extend beyond the
> height of your screen.
> IDEs/editors can match parentheses as well. :)
> - The parentheses make the code sleek and aerodynamic
>
> ---
> Joseph Smith
> j...@uwcreations.com
> (402)601-5443
>
>
>
>
>
> On Dec 19, 2009, at 11:21 AM, David Nolen wrote:
>
>> On Sat, Dec 19, 2009 at 8:25 AM, Martin Coxall <pseudo.m...@me.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > I guess it's mostly a matter of judging a language by its long-term
>> > merits instead of initial appearance -- just like with so many other
>> > things in life.
>> >
>>
>> That - right there - is a tacit admission that the Clojure community will
>> find it actively desirable that it remain a minority language, so we can all
>> feel smug that we understand something those poor average programmers were
>> too simple to see.
>>
>> I don't think anybody in the Clojure community wants to Clojure to be a
>> fringe language. Considering the ML now has about 3K subscribers (up 2500
>> from 14 months ago) I think Rich Hickey and the community have done a fair
>> job touting it's advantages.
>>
>> However, there are somethings about every language that you just have to
>> accept. Lisp's parentheses are one of those things. For example, it's really
>> not worth complaining about Python's enforcement of significant whitespace.
>> Sure people sing it praises now, but to this day there still fruitless
>> discussions about the matter mostly initiated by people with only a passing
>> familiarity of the language.
>>
>> You know there's nothing wrong with allowing Clojure to display its elegance
>> upfront, rather than making programmers work for it like it's some
>> Presbytarian admission exam.
>>
>> You are not the first to bring up the concern about parentheses and you will
>> certainly not be the last. My advice would be to let the matter drop. People
>> who aren't going to learn Lisp just because it has parentheses aren't going
>> to be converted. But from the variety of programmers on this list, parens
>> are not a significant deterrant for programmers coming from the background
>> of Java, Scala, JavaScript, C, C++, Objective-C, OCaml, Haskell, Prolog,
>> Erlang, PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, etc.
>>
>>
>> Martin
>>
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>
>
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