Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ns-mx!iowasp.physics.uiowa.edu!maverick.ksu.ksu.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!uwm.edu!bionet!agate!linus!linus!ramsdell From: ramsdell@mitre.org (John D. Ramsdell) Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme Subject: Re: ML syntax Message-ID: Date: 21 Sep 90 11:03:19 GMT References: <9009190401.aa01540@mc.lcs.mit.edu><9009200443.aa24008@mc.lcs.mit.edu> Sender: ramsdell@linus.mitre.org Reply-To: ramsdell@mitre.org Organization: Mitre Corporation, Bedford, MA. Lines: 27 In-reply-to: shivers@A.GP.CS.CMU.EDU's message of 20 Sep 90 08:40:53 GMT Date: 18 Sep 90 17:48:51 GMT From: Cliff Click Subject: Virtues of ML syntax I've done some Scheme programming, darn little ML programming and scads of C/Fortran/Pascal/etc programming. I find ML syntax to be incredibly unreadable, while Scheme & C syntax isn't that bad. ML syntax reminds me of Pascal syntax in the following way. Pascal syntax was designed to be parsable by a recursive decent parser which was written in Pascal. Likewise, the ML syntax seems to me to have been designed to be machine readable instead of human readable. Notice the large number of keywords and the lack of a closing marker after the match production in the ML grammar. I suspect Haskell is an improvement although it mixes up the traditional usages of ":" and "::". In article <9009200443.aa24008@mc.lcs.mit.edu> shivers@A.GP.CS.CMU.EDU (Olin Shivers) writes: I like lisp syntax myself, because you can extend it with macros. Notational engineering, while certainly abusable, is an important tool in a software engineer's bag of tricks. -Olin I like lisp syntax even when I do not use any macros. I especially appreciate lisp syntax when I write C programs. In my opinion, regular syntax is easier to understand.