[m00natic]

It's allegorical in the sense that this is general Lisp technique useful not just in this case. The DSL is targeted at (non programmer) end users and supposed to be fired through a REPL. Wouldn't want to make them write C++ with lambdas, semi-columns and whatever syntax traps of the latest standard.

[Veedrac]

That doesn't support the post's argument, that it's not about aesthetics, but about qualitatively simpler solutions.

> Often times I hear the claim that (programming language) syntax doesn't matter or if it does, it's only to provide some subjective readability aesthetics. It's somewhat surprising to me how large majority of supposedly rational people like programmers/computer scientists would throw out objectivity with such confidence. So let me provide a simple real world case where uniform syntax enables out of the box solution which is qualitatively simpler.

That making non-programmers use complex syntax and type semicolons is bad is fair, but it's a rather different claim than the post's.

[m00natic]

Well, dynamic queries by end users is the main goal here. Your static helper functions are completely unusable in that context. Analysing a query and generating code at runtime is easy and idiomatic with uniform syntax (and accompanying language support) and the claim is that solution is not only speedier but implementation in CL is qualitatively simpler than the alternatives.

[Veedrac]

The point my first comment made is that you don't need to analyse a query at runtime, you just need to provide functions. I will agree again that Lisp makes REPLs easier to write than does C++, but a CL with Lua syntax could still, just as easily, provide functions and expose a REPL. It's the same solution, just without the unjustified AST transformations.

[m00natic]

How can you provide a REPL language without analyzing it at runtime? Write Lua random syntax in the REPL? Not a great improvement over C++. Not to mention that you'll probably use something like `eval` which is not compilation thus inferior.

By the way, even your original example - I can't see how it can work honestly. How can you identify fields through (lambda) parameter names only (no mention of types either)? Probably the least boilerplate-heavy solution would be stringly typed.

[Veedrac]

A Lua REPL is hardly worse than a Lisp one.

> something like `eval` which is not compilation thus inferior

I honestly don't know what that means. Turning text into code is compilation; there is no difference between the two in that regard, except perhaps that in the Lisp DSL case it's more manual.

> How can you identify fields through (lambda) parameter names only (no mention of types either)?

Not familiar enough with Lua, but in Python you just use keyword arguments.