On Thu, Nov 17, 2011 at 1:50 AM, Derek Atkins <warl...@mit.edu> wrote:
> Donald Allen <donaldcal...@gmail.com> writes: > > >> (cond ((> x 5) (fun a b))) ;; I won't even attempt to properly indent > this > >> in gmail > >> > >> vs. > >> > >> if x > 5: > >> > > > > I'm not sure how I fat-fingered this, but the message got sent > prematurely, > > destroying my credibility:-) > > > > Anyway, you get my point -- writing that conditional in Python or C looks > > more natural to people and so they prefer it to Scheme/Lisp on those > narrow > > terms, forgetting what working in Scheme buys you (personally, I'm more > > productive in Scheme than any other language, and I've written code over > a > > long career in most of them; Python is also a strong contender in the > > productivity dept., but there's a lot more to learn and keep in mind than > > with Scheme; it's a much more complex language, even though the code > looks > > simple). > > Um, I don't see a *HUGE* difference between: > > if (x > 5) > { > if-clause ... > } > else > { > else-clause ... > } > > vs: > > (if (> x 5) > (if-clause) > (else-clause) > ) > > To *my* eyes they look very close (modulo the x > 5 vs. > x 5) > Yes, that's true. There *are* things in Scheme that look much like C or Python and 'if' is one of them, which is why I chose 'cond' and not 'if' for my example. But despite that overlap, I think there's enough in Scheme that looks weird to people used to other languages (you identified one of them -- infix vs. prefix in predicates and also the obvious -- use of prefix notation in arithmetic expressions) that they reject it on what I would consider much too narrow grounds, failing to carefully weigh the advantages against the perceived disadvantages. /Don > > > /Don > > -derek > > -- > Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory > Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board (SIPB) > URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/ PP-ASEL-IA N1NWH > warl...@mit.edu PGP key available > _______________________________________________ gnucash-devel mailing list gnucash-devel@gnucash.org https://lists.gnucash.org/mailman/listinfo/gnucash-devel