From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Date: Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:07:41 +0100 From: Ethan Grammatikidis To: 9fans@9fans.net Message-Id: <20090715220741.4835ddb4.eekee57@fastmail.fm> In-Reply-To: <56a297000907151342x334e7793ubfedb791a62f2bd8@mail.gmail.com> References: <7d3530220907151000s60671d2gfdb18cdf12c55097@mail.gmail.com> <0009e18319f5c60dc890463505286c1c@quintile.net> <3e1162e60907151159g5b031e99k2ad8171c9c268392@mail.gmail.com> <9ab217670907151314n4e5c5855oda60cc527bb83422@mail.gmail.com> <56a297000907151342x334e7793ubfedb791a62f2bd8@mail.gmail.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Subject: Re: [9fans] Why does Acme only show text? Topicbox-Message-UUID: 21eda05e-ead5-11e9-9d60-3106f5b1d025 On Wed, 15 Jul 2009 22:42:20 +0200 Noah Evans wrote: > http://9fans.net/archive/2008/05/6 Good to see this brought up. Whitespace may be the most comfortably reada= ble means of indicating flow, but it's fragile. Better, IMHO, is delimite= rs with plenty of space around them, but even then they do intrude. Curre= ntly I like Q where parentheses can be used if necessary but a couple of = syntactic tricks are used to keep them to the minimum and whitespace has = some meaning but (IIRC) not over-much. I find the best thing to do with languages with delimeters is to run code= through a code formatter often. I'm using Gnu indent for C code (especia= lly valuable when dealing with Gnu C :) ), is there a similar tool for Pl= an 9? >=20 > On Wed, Jul 15, 2009 at 10:29 PM, Jason Catena = wrote: > > Devon's anecdote is along the lines of my position. =C2=A0I'm sure th= ere's > > a paper somewhere that counts parenthesis versus whitespace errors, > > but I haven't yet read it. =C2=A0I have programmed Lisp and Haskell (= at two > > extremes), and from this experience at least much prefer whitespace t= o > > parentheses. =C2=A0In addition, I rely on design theory (esp. Tufte e= t al > > on his web site) that reducing clutter aids comprehension, and > > delimiters very much seem clutter to me. > > > > Jason Catena > > > > > --=20 Ethan Grammatikidis Those who are slower at parsing information must necessarily be faster at problem-solving.