As an interesting point of trivia, the idea of abandoning S-expressions for some other notation actually pre-dates the first implementation of Lisp. S-expressions were originally intended as a temporary measure, before a more familiar representation - deemed M-expressions - could be formalized. But in the words of John McCarthy:
*"The project of defining M-expressions precisely and compiling them or at least translating them into S-expressions was neither finalized nor explicitly abandoned. It just receded into the indefinite future, and a new generation of programmers appeared who preferred internal notation to any FORTRAN-like or ALGOL-like notation that could be devised." The History Of Lisp<http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/history/lisp/node3.html#SECTION00030000000000000000> * In short, the idea of abandoning S-expressions has fair claim to be one of the oldest ideas in Lisp. My personal theory about that is that by the time someone knows enough Lisp to do a decent job of the translation, they no longer see any problem... Kris On Monday, 25 March 2013 10:52:23 UTC, poetix wrote: > > I really like the look of this: > > http://readable.sourceforge.net/ > > which defines a completely reversible transformation between e.g. > > define fibfast(n) > if {n < 2} > n > fibup(n 2 1 0) > > and > > (define (fibfast n) > (if (< n 2) > n > (fibup n 2 1 0))) > > > and wonder how difficult it would be to support it (or something like it) > in/for Clojure. A coffeescript-like approach might be a good first step. > > Any thoughts? > > Dominic > -- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
