[plt-scheme] Paren Paralysis Sufferers Unite

From: Barry Brown (barry at cs.sierracollege.edu)
Date: Wed Oct 21 18:17:24 EDT 2009

Are you thinking of:

* editors that visually match parentheses?
* Lisp-like languages that accept any pair of matching symbols, like  
braces {} and brackets [], in addition to  parentheses?
* programming environments that use entirely different syntactic  
constructs, such as boxes or circles, instead of parentheses?

I don't think such things exist. I could be wrong...

;)

Seriously, I agree that the parentheses can get out of hand,  
especially once you depart from the scaled-down languages of HtDP.   
Once you've reached that point, though, you've started to recognize  
what the parentheses are for and can begin to see through them.

I'd like to see more research into using alternative syntactic  
constructs (boxes, circles, sounds, colors, etc.) that could help free  
beginners from the tyranny of parentheses.

-B

On Oct 21, 2009, at 2:43 PM, Joe Marshall wrote:

> On Wed, Oct 21, 2009 at 9:54 AM,  <hendrik at topoi.pooq.com> wrote:
>>
>> I think Lisp badly needs simpls syntactic schemes to reduce the  
>> number
>> of parntheses and make parentheses-matching visualy easier.
>
> Wow!  What a novel idea!  Why hasn't anyone done this?
>
> -- 
> ~jrm
> _________________________________________________
>  For list-related administrative tasks:
>  http://list.cs.brown.edu/mailman/listinfo/plt-scheme



Posted on the users mailing list.