Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!spool.mu.edu!agate!agate!adrianho From: adrianho@barkley.berkeley.edu (Adrian J Ho) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: scheme [Re: What does an anti-perl look like] Message-ID: Date: 15 Jun 91 05:30:17 GMT References: <2625@amix.commodore.com> Sender: usenet@agate.berkeley.edu (USENET Administrator) Organization: University of California, Berkeley Lines: 50 In-Reply-To: skrenta@amix.commodore.com's message of 14 Jun 91 17: 51:08 GMT In article <2625@amix.commodore.com> skrenta@amix.commodore.com (Rich Skrenta) writes: >Scheme may very well be The Future, but this arrogant attitude does nothing >to promote the language. Well, I guess Ozan might have gotten a _little_ over-enthusiastic, but do cut him some slack -- he is, after all, the Scheme Repository maintainer. 8-) > Scheme seems to share much of its syntax with >Lisp, which tends to be a "write only" language. IMHO, no more "write-only" than C. If your Scheme/Lisp code is neatly indented and you take care to use descriptive names _and_ comments, it's very readable. It's probably a matter of getting used to a particular language. Having a powerful editor like Emacs helps, too 8-). > Languages in which it >is often easier to scrap a function and write it from scratch than to >debug it don't earn high marks among those who have to maintain code for >a living. Hardly true of Scheme/Lisp. The only language that might be truly said to possess this characteristic is APL, and only because of its infernal character set. (Because of this, APL is the one language I've encountered in my life that I've never _wanted_ to master.) Substituting each APL operator with a descriptive name would certainly go a long way towards making it less of a "write-only" language. >Scheme may be wonderful, but you shouldn't dismiss people who complain >about its syntax. Their complaints may be valid. Perhaps, but the _environment_ under which the complainants use a particular language often goes a _very_ long way towards shaping their opinions about language features. For instance, I found (like the original Scheme complainant) the innumerable parens of Scheme programs to be a royal pain in the butt -- until I discovered Emacs. With its paren-matching and "intelligent" indentation capabilities, all was well again in SchemeLand. 8-) Another example: Does anyone program in Smalltalk on a regular basis without a class browser? Would anyone _like_ to? 8-) Summary: Syntax is only one aspect of a language's appeal. Development tools, although they have absolutely nothing to do with the language per se, also play an important role. With the right tools, even APL can be a joy to program. 8-) [NOTE: This article should not be construed as a APL-bashing post. I picked the language as an (extreme) example of a "write-only" language (to the general programming populace).]