axiom-developer
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

RE: [Axiom-developer] RE: Emacs + input syntax


From: Page, Bill
Subject: RE: [Axiom-developer] RE: Emacs + input syntax
Date: Thu, 11 May 2006 19:02:59 -0400

Tim, 

On  Thursday, May 11, 2006 6:23 PM you wrote:
> Bill Page wrote: 
> >Can either of you give any objective argument about why
> >you prefer to write in a serialized one-dimensional manner,
> >encoding nested structures with the bracket (or even a
> >parenthesis) notation, instead of using the natural two
> >dimensional nature of the display media to express this
> >structure more succinctly?
> 
> yep. i can't count what i can't see. i can balance parens
> over thousands of lines but i can't balance spaces. parens
> give proper nesting no matter how i mangle the source. 
> spaces don't.

I have no trouble seeing the visual organization of a few
pages of indented code. In fact, in my experience the lack
of proper indentation has sometimes hidden logical errors
in my programs. Reviewing the indentation (forgetting about
the brackets) has sometimes revealed the error.

I suppose you are arguing that the parens notation contains
some redundant information because it contains matched "begin"
symbols and "end" symbols while in the "pile" notation the
beginning of an indented block is marked by the first initial
white space greater than the line that precedes it, while
any line with less initial white space ends all proceeding
blocks with greater white space. So therefore the serialized
linear notation is perhaps inherently less fragile?

But I do not think this is the case.

> try carefully balancing spaces over 5 pages of code (e.g.
> large nested conditional statements). one missing space and
> the meaning of the program SILENTLY changes.
> 
> my "hack" for doing this is to globally replace spaces
> following a newline by a period and count periods. then,
> before compiling the program, replace them by spaces.
>

Have you ever tried turning your head 90% to the page? :)
Apparently most humans have greater visual acuity in the
horizontal plane that in the vertical.

It seems to me that balanced miss-placed parens can be even
more SILENT than a missing space. The error could be anywhere
from the first character of the program to the last and more
over it can be obscured by the fact that the programmer may
have also inconsistently indented the code to exhibit the
structure she expects rather than what she coded.

> oh, and you can easily screw the whole world over with an
> editor that likes to replace spaces by tabs. no end of
> puzzlement and grief follows.

My solution: use a proper text editor.

> 
> > If not, my label of "linguist prejudice" must surely apply.
> 
> prejudice is pre-judging a decision.
> experience is post-judging a decision.
> the decision to pile is flawed.
> based on experience.
> 

I was amused to see the following headline at

http://www.tiobe.com/tpci.htm

"May Headline: Eventual recognition for Visual FoxPro and Lisp
(approaching A status)"

Wow, lisp finally beat out Cobol this year! Hooray.

Regards,
Bill Page.




reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]