| Hehe, what are curiously peeved sounding post. I was seeking to keep it short but as I've been unclear let's drill into some stuff. > Not really; it will clash Nope, named-readtables fixed the clashing reader-macro issue a good while back. > You mean ... programming the programming language? Yes, I do. I said it the way I did out of choice, as the 'programmable programming language' phrase has been bandied around so often that, for some, it has lost impact. Maybe that phrase doesn't inspire the same ahah moment in some as it does for other. Saying the same thing in a different way can be enough for someone to pick up something new. (It feels weird writing this down as it's kind of self evident) > Do you plan to type "lambda" with args enough times to eventually that hour of your life back I that hour was spent learning about reader macros, learning something new is of value to me, so there is no 'lost hour' to reclaim. Don't you just code for fun some days, without worrying if it is somehow ultimately useful? > Note how if we take λ(* _ _) and then just move the parenthesis over the Greek symbol, we get (λ * _ _). This saves almost the same amount of typing Ah ok, maybe this is where we parted mental ways. I'm not interesting in saving typing, that wasn't the goal. The point was to remove a little visual obstruction from what I was doing. For example (and yes it is a trivial example) (lambda (x) (* x x)) is 20 characters long, of which 8 are of interest (* x x) I liked that the shorthand reduced a little visual noise. Yes there are many ways to skin this particular cat, but I liked the shorthand. I also like not having the lambda in the first position as it maintained a property of lisp code I generally enjoy, that I can run my eyes over the lefthand side of the forms and quickly get a rough feel of what is going on. Again, this is just a personal feeling, but some days I write code just for me, for fun, so why not make things pleasant for myself. It's rather odd to get into a discussion about this, when the whole point is that we don't have to pick one golden way and enshrine it in the language. It's just a library, use it or don't, it doesn't matter. Peace |