Grant Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > On 2006-03-07, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> Is there any advantage to a language having a nice mathematically >> compact grammar like LISP does? (or at least used to?) Yes, Lisp's syntax allows for a very powerful macro mechanism that is extremely useful. > Yes. Grammars like LISP's make it easy for programs to generate and > read code. Grammars like Python's make it easy for humans to > generate and read code. I find Lisp to be perfectly readable. In fact, in some ways I find it to be more readable than any other language, including Python. I like, for instance, the prefix notation, since then I can identify the sort of expression that I am looking at without having to look ahead into the expression. For instance, if Python were to have been designed so that you would write: let myVeryLongVariableName = 3 I would have preferred this over myVeryLongVariableName = 3 With the latter, I have to scan down the line to see that this line is in an assignment statement. (This problem is significantly worse in C++, where variable declarations can be rather difficult to visually parse, unless all classes begin with capital letters and nothing else does.) >> Many have admired the mathematically simple grammar of LISP >> in which much of the language is built up from conses IIRC. >> Python's grammar seems complicated by comparison. >> Is this anything to worry about? No, not really. Not unless you want a powerful macro facility or you want to programmatically analyze or manipulate your software. |>oug -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
