Re: [PATCH v3] docs/match: pattern matcher example makeover

[Blake Shaw]

Arun Isaac <arunisaac@systemreboot.net> writes:

> Hi Blake,
>
>> Well, these conventions can be found throughout the gamut of scheme
>> literature going back to the 80s, and some of the largest scheme
>> projects, such as Chez, Racket, etc. employ them. So if you're
>> getting into Scheme, you'll necessarily encounter them, and if you
>> haven't been made aware that brackets are syntactic sugar for parens
>> in Scheme, or if that doesn't become apparent with some quick repl
>> experimentation, you've probably jumped into pattern matching a bit
>> too quickly.  
>>
>> But overall, it seems the objections against the Indiana style here
>> are primarily concerned with individual, current user/contributor
>> preferences, rather than out of a concern for the target audience,
>> which are newcomers.
>
> I don't think I agree. When I was a newcomer to guile and was reading
> the sxml-match documentation in the manual for the first time, I found
> it very confusing that there were square brackets. At that point, I
> understood match but was confounded into thinking that sxml-match was
> completely different due to the square brackets. Finally, when I
> understood, I contributed a patch making everything round
> parentheses. https://issues.guix.gnu.org/30920
>
> I'd say a typical newcomer is not familiar with the gamut of scheme
> literature going back to the 80s. I certainly wasn't, and still am not
> to be honest.

Point taken, but I'd remark that I didn't mean that newcomers should
be familiar with existing literature, but rather that its common
convention with roots going way back, rather than an ad-hoc notation.

>
> Cheers!
> Arun