Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watmath!att!cbnewsc!lgm From: lgm@cbnewsc.att.com (lawrence.g.mayka) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Virtues of Lisp syntax Summary: Keyword arguments would make Lisp easier for some people to read Message-ID: <1990Sep18.014609.13607@cbnewsc.att.com> Date: 18 Sep 90 01:46:09 GMT References: <3368@skye.ed.ac.uk> Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 24 In article , masinter@parc.xerox.com (Larry Masinter) writes: > about how it does nesting. I think a lot of people find Lisp hard to > read and maintain, and that the difficulty is intrinsic, but I don't > think there is as strong a correlation with editor technology as you > imply. Most complaints I've heard about Lisp syntax, from both novices and regular users, boil down to the claim that the repetitive, positionally dependent syntax of most Lisp constructs has insufficient redundancy for easy recognition by the human eye. Repetition of parentheses could be reduced by defining (e.g., via the macro character facility) a character pair such as {} to be synonymous with (). Positional dependency could be reduced simply by making greater use of keywords (e.g., defining macros synonymous with common constructs but taking keyword arguments instead of positional ones). The difficulty some people have in reading Lisp is hence not intrinsic to its syntax, but rather an accident of common practice. Lawrence G. Mayka AT&T Bell Laboratories lgm@iexist.att.com Standard disclaimer.