Bjoern Schliessmann wrote: > Alex Mizrahi wrote: > >>(message (Hello 'Bjoern) > > >>> BS> Can you give an example? I cannot imagine how homogenity >>> always BS> results in easiness. > > > >>homogenity means that i can cut any expression and paste in any >>other expression, and as long as lexical variables are ok, i'll >>get correct results -- i don't have to reindent it or whatever. > > > Ah, so *that's* what you meant ... but I don't really understand the > ease of it.
Code in the abstract exists as a tree of trees. With parens, we now have textual markers delimiting these trees. That means I can point to any arbitrary subtree by pointing to its left or right parens, and tell the editor to copy or delete "that chunk of logic". And now I am manipulating chunks of program logic instead of text. One simple but hopefully illustrative example: suppose I have an if statement with two big branches. My code then looks like: (if (condition) (big-branch-1)(big-branch-2)) Please remember that any of those fakes can be arbitrarily deep nested expressions. Now during refactoring, I decide bb-2 processing goes elsewhere, maybe somewhere "upstream" in the logic. So I double-click and then drag-and-drop, or cut and paste. Then I double-click on the entire if statement, and then do a control-click on the "then" condition, control-click happening to mean "paste what I am clicking". Suddenly the "then" is the whole form. (And, yes, this means my vendor took away from me the normal copy-and-drop associated with control click <g>, but I could modify things to get it back if I really cared.) Of course the next question has to be, how often does that come up? When refactoring it sometimes feels like I do nothing else. :) It turns out that this is an insanely natural way to work with code. Note also that after any amount of dicing I simply hit a magic key combo and the editor reindents everything. In a sense, Lisp is the language that handles indentation best. hth, ken -- Algebra: http://www.tilton-technology.com/LispNycAlgebra1.htm "Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five years, Doctor, and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it." -- Elwood P. Dowd "I'll say I'm losing my grip, and it feels terrific." -- Smiling husband to scowling wife, New Yorker cartoon -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
