Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Hendrik Boom]

On Mon, Oct 26, 2015 at 09:35:22PM -0700, Jordan Johnson wrote:
> On Oct 23, 2015, at 8:30 AM, Greg Hendershott  
> wrote:
> > Keyword arguments:  Although I'm comfortable in the #: camp, I can
> > understand people preferring :foo over #:foo for the reason that it is
> > faster to type. #: requires two shifted chars. If you touch type you
> > use both left and right shift keys O_o. 
> 
> Catching up late on this discussion, I found only the above surprising; I 
> touch-type, but always use left-shift for both hash and colon.
> 
> Maybe it's a lefty thing.

For me, using left-shiftt is a leftover fro the old days of keypunches, 
where you used the left shift to put it in numeric mode.  All the digitw 
were on the right.  Once the knowledge is in the fingers it lasts a long 
time.

-- hendrik

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Jordan Johnson]

On Oct 23, 2015, at 8:30 AM, Greg Hendershott  wrote:
> Keyword arguments:  Although I'm comfortable in the #: camp, I can
> understand people preferring :foo over #:foo for the reason that it is
> faster to type. #: requires two shifted chars. If you touch type you
> use both left and right shift keys O_o. 

Catching up late on this discussion, I found only the above surprising; I 
touch-type, but always use left-shift for both hash and colon.

Maybe it's a lefty thing.

FWIW, I'm in the "please don't break existing code for this reason" camp, 
though I also appreciate the extra visual distinction of an octothorp'd keyword.

Best,
Jordan

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Neil Van Dyke]

Greg Hendershott wrote on 10/24/2015 10:43 AM:
p.s. If people read that (even just section 7.7), and there's still a 
debate? Then probably the only resolution would be a compromise that 
leaves everyone equally unhappy. Like say :#:keyword:#: ;)


I linked the paper on Oct 15, though it got lost in the volume. Quoting 
from section 7.7:


We can offer no rationale that will resolve the debate. We chose #: 
because it broke no existing code and because at least one author 
likes how it stands out. An informal poll among PLT Scheme users 
suggested roughly equal support for all three choices (prefix #:, 
prefix :, and suffix :) with a slightly higher preference for 
#:—possibly reflecting the syntax that is already in place. In any 
case, PLT Scheme’s #lang notation would allow future modules to be 
written using a different syntax without affecting old modules.


The rationale for `#:`, aside from a subjective visual-perceptual call, 
was that it "broke no existing code".


As I said on Oct 15, speaking in retrospect:

The Scheme situation is discouraging, and I'm glad that Racket (PLT 
Scheme) went ahead and did something. However, I wish we all had cared 
slightly less about R5RS compatibility and such back then (especially 
since R5RS compatibility has been abandoned in much larger ways in 
Racket today, such as in pair mutability).  Perhaps I could've been 
using colon-prefix happily the last several years. And also, no one 
would have introduced the few problematic colon-symbols that now have 
to be considered before adding colon-prefix keywords today.


I don't like the `#lang` option, mostly because of the effective 
fragmentation of the language that the community uses informally 
*outside of* modules.


Though Matthias points out that fragmentation happens, and he 
distinguishes linguistic fragmentation from social fragmentation, with 
the latter sounding worse.


I suppose that `#lang paddle` could correct Racket's linguistic 
naughtiness, while somehow retaining a cohesive social unit, but you 
know that's eventually going to come up in therapy.


Neil V.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Greg Hendershott]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 2:58 PM, Anthony Carrico  wrote:
> but seriously Asumu mentioned
> Flatt and Barzilay's "Keyword and optional arguments in PLT Scheme" on
> irc last night:
>   http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.162.17
> The paper illuminates the history and all the issues raised is this thread.

Thanks! That's helpful. I should have thought to go look for a paper about this.

p.s. If people read that (even just section 7.7), and there's still a
debate? Then probably the only resolution would be a compromise that
leaves everyone equally unhappy.  Like say :#:keyword:#:  ;)

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Anthony Carrico]

On 10/23/2015 11:30 AM, Greg Hendershott wrote:
> If you touch type you
> use both left and right shift keys O_o.

...but only the right shift key in dvorak, but seriously Asumu mentioned
Flatt and Barzilay's "Keyword and optional arguments in PLT Scheme" on
irc last night:
  http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.162.17
The paper illuminates the history and all the issues raised is this thread.

-- 
Anthony Carrico

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[William G Hatch]

On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 02:58:30PM -0400, Anthony Carrico wrote:

On 10/23/2015 11:30 AM, Greg Hendershott wrote:

If you touch type you
use both left and right shift keys O_o.


...but only the right shift key in dvorak


For greater keyboard layout awareness, here is a more complete
assessment of the situation:

Arensito, Qwertz, Hacker's Dvorak, and Maltron layouts: 3 keys (adding #
is only one extra key because it is unshifted).

Hatchak and Azerty layouts: 3 keys (although it's two for # and one for
:)

Dvorak and Capewell need them both shifted but only one side's shift key.

Neo, Coleman, and Workman all take 4 keys like Qwerty.

#: is onerous for both left and right versions of one-handed Dvorak,
since both require shifting and are on opposite sides of the keyboard.
And I assume you only use these layouts if you have to type one-handed.

On the default AOSP touch keyboard, it take 3 touches to type #:, which
is only 1 more than : alone.

But seriously, I'm totally on the side of #:.  In no layout is it such a
burden to occasionally type #:, and if you worry about typing efficiency
or ergonomics a better plan is to switch away from qwerty.  Visually I
think #: gives better emphasis to keywords' special purpose.

- William

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Greg Hendershott]

Keyword arguments:  Although I'm comfortable in the #: camp, I can
understand people preferring :foo over #:foo for the reason that it is
faster to type. #: requires two shifted chars. If you touch type you
use both left and right shift keys O_o. In that respect #: is even
more awkward a finger dance than #%. :)  Although it doesn't bother me
that much, and I don't think it should change, I do understand.
However...

Symbol(ish) values:  I don't understand preferring :foo over 'foo.
It's more typing not less. And more basically, just why? I don't
understand having two symbol-ish value flavors.  People new to lisp
already have trouble understanding the how and why of symbols.^1
Having two flavors of this seems like a distinction without a
difference; what am I overlooking?

^1: Example: 
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8846628/what-exactly-is-a-symbol-in-lisp-scheme


On Fri, Oct 23, 2015 at 10:00 AM, John Berry  wrote:
> Yes, speaking personally, if I think about what I mean when I think about
> :keyword over #:keyword, what I really am after is the difference Alexis
> describes: of keywords as values vs. keywords as syntax.
>
>
> And looked at that way, it really just seems to be a question of different
> idioms, that of older Lisp/Scheme style vs. the Clojure style I got
> accustomed to on my day job.
>
>
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 11:00 PM, Alexis King  wrote:
>>
>> > And I'm surprised how many people claim to love #:keyword.  (The
>> > engineering opposition to any non-backward-compatible change was entirely
>> > predictable, but I assumed only a small percentage would actually prefer
>> > #:keyword, due to familiarity or different aesthetic wiring, and that 
>> > around
>> > half the people would be indifferent to the change.)
>>
>> I was going to refrain from saying anything more on this subject (I didn’t
>> respond to the survey at all), but this point interested me. I realized that
>> I’ve grown fond of #:keyword, and I didn’t have any idea why. There have
>> been many times that I’ve found it clunky, or that I’ve missed Clojure or
>> Ruby’s :keywords.
>>
>> That’s when I realized: Racket doesn’t use its keywords like those
>> languages do. Clojure uses them constantly—it uses them wherever Racket
>> would usually use symbols—and Rails has elevated Ruby’s symbols above
>> literal strings in pure frequency (for better or for worse).
>>
>> In Ruby, I can do `x = :kw`. In Clojure, I can do (def x :kw). In Racket,
>> I have to do (define x '#:kw), and that is really awful. I need not one but
>> three(!) symbols in front of my raw identifier, and the level of syntactic
>> noise is pretty atrocious. As a side effect of both this and the traditional
>> use of symbols in scheme for this purpose, Racket pretty much only uses
>> keywords for one thing: keyword arguments.
>>
>> In Racket, a bare #:keyword used as an expression is not just useless, it
>> is a syntax error. A Racket programmer is trained to see keywords in
>> function application alone, so (foo #:kw bar) looks fine, but (foo #:kw)
>> looks weird. They always need to be paired with a value. With keywords so
>> integrally associated with function application syntax, I’ve grown to think
>> of keywords as syntax, never as runtime values, and the hash prefix
>> reinforces this. Heck, even syntax/parse’s :expr syntax class rules out
>> keywords! They are little syntactic tags, nothing more.
>>
>> For me, this is actually fine. I don’t really mind the verbosity, though
>> making keyword arguments prettier would be nice to have. However, if you are
>> arguing for using keywords as runtime values, that’s an entirely different
>> story... though it does raise the question of how they should be
>> special-cased in function application for keyword arguments (both Ruby and
>> Clojure effectively transform keyword arguments into a single hash argument,
>> rather than making “keyword procedures” that have some special magic).
>>
>> Basically: keywords are very different in Racket. I don’t know much CL, so
>> I can’t speak to that, but I think there’s more going on here than syntax.
>> If that’s the case, omitting a hash would only solve a portion of the
>> problem... and Racket programmers might not view their keywords in the same
>> light as those from other languages. I certainly didn’t.
>>
>> Sorry for the rambling... but maybe some food for thought.
>>
>> Alexis
>>
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>
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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Jay McCarthy]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Leif Andersen 
wrote:

> > I am genuinely surprised :keyword saw so much support and that change
> was so attractive to people.
>
> That's because of the questions you asked. I saw those questions and said
> to myself: "Self, I don't care enough about this debate enough to even
> really fill out these questions." (Although if you had a spot on the pull
> for the question: "I don't care about this at all, just don't break my
> code", I would have filled that out.)
>

I'm interested in your elaboration. I expected someone with your opinion to
vote something like 5/5/0 because you don't care between the two, but don't
want a change.

Jay


>
>
>
> ~Leif Andersen
>
> On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 1:43 PM, Jay McCarthy 
> wrote:
>
>> It has been a little more than a week and we've stopped getting results.
>>
>> The full results should be publicly available. Here is a summary:
>>
>>
>> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HSwtxLhz5HWGMJjMXaO8LQyHJsdMkGbBlRa4fU7Sa34/viewanalytics
>>
>> and here is the raw data:
>>
>>
>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rZNNGwupMZTybxKRhukLdgA8VIA8oPlQ7nPk8Gv52Es/edit#gid=348615477
>>
>> My interpretation of the data is as follows:
>>
>> - The #:keyword syntax is liked fine with a rating of 5.67
>> - The :keyword syntax is more loved with a rating of 6.9
>> - But change is not popular, average of 5.1 with high standard deviation
>> - People that really like #:keyword do not want a change and do not like
>> :keyword
>> - People that really like :keyword want a change
>>
>> I am genuinely surprised :keyword saw so much support and that change was
>> so attractive to people.
>>
>> Naturally whenever you do stuff like this, you want to ask more
>> questions, like what about keyword:, what about supporting both, etc.
>>
>> Jay
>>
>>
>> On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Neil Van Dyke 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> We are conducting a highly scientific poll.
>>>
>>> The question we want to answer is whether people would like for the
>>> Racket standard languages to have symbols that begin with the colon
>>> character (except for the symbol `:`) to read the same has keywords that
>>> begin with pound-colon.
>>>
>>> That is, when this glorious colon-keywords support is added, instead of
>>> having to type and look at:
>>>
>>> (foo #:abc 1 #:xyx 42)
>>>
>>> you can choose to bask in the beauty of:
>>>
>>> (foo :abc 1 :xyx 42)
>>>
>>> Then you would be free to use the gorgeous colon-keywords everywhere in
>>> Racket, including in quick one-line examples in email list posts.
>>>
>>> All people of great aesthetic sense, intellect, and good moral fiber,
>>> who would naturally like everyone to have the right to use either
>>> colon-keywords or (eww) pound-colon keywords (in unity, and without
>>> unnecessary `#lang` schisms!), should answer the quick poll:
>>>
>>> http://goo.gl/forms/Kwl3uZVMsb
>>>
>>> (When the poll question asks "Is it worth changing?", read it is as "You
>>> are a good person, and you naturally think Racket should support both
>>> colon-keywords and pound-colon keywords, right?")
>>>
>>> I call upon all freedom-loving Racketeers to stand up and fight for the
>>> righteous cause of colon-keywords.  The moment to answer this highly
>>> scientific poll is now.
>>>
>>> Neil V.
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>> Groups "Racket Users" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send
>>> an email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
>>> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
>>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Jay McCarthy
>> Associate Professor
>> PLT @ CS @ UMass Lowell
>> http://jeapostrophe.github.io
>>
>>"Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing,
>>   for ye are laying the foundation of a great work.
>> And out of small things proceedeth that which is great."
>>   - D 64:33
>>
>> --
>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
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>>
>
>


-- 
Jay McCarthy
Associate Professor
PLT @ CS @ UMass Lowell
http://jeapostrophe.github.io

   "Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing,
  for ye are laying the foundation of a great work.
And out of small things proceedeth that which is great."
  - D 64:33

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Leif Andersen]

So, I thought about doing that. Except that I ended up not, because voting
5/5/0 doesn't properly capture my feelings.

5/5/0 seems more like a, I see pros and cons with both sides, but I
fundamentally care some way or the other which way this goes.

My opinion really is that this is a silly issue, and doesn't really matter
that much to me at all. And thus I don't really care either way. I would
vote on the 0 for the last question, (just because meh, I don't care one
way or the other), but I really didn't fit anywhere on the spectrum for the
first two boxes.

Does that clarify my opinion a bit?


~Leif Andersen

On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 1:53 PM, Jay McCarthy 
wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Leif Andersen 
> wrote:
>
>> > I am genuinely surprised :keyword saw so much support and that change
>> was so attractive to people.
>>
>> That's because of the questions you asked. I saw those questions and said
>> to myself: "Self, I don't care enough about this debate enough to even
>> really fill out these questions." (Although if you had a spot on the pull
>> for the question: "I don't care about this at all, just don't break my
>> code", I would have filled that out.)
>>
>
> I'm interested in your elaboration. I expected someone with your opinion
> to vote something like 5/5/0 because you don't care between the two, but
> don't want a change.
>
> Jay
>
>
>>
>>
>>
>> ~Leif Andersen
>>
>> On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 1:43 PM, Jay McCarthy 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> It has been a little more than a week and we've stopped getting results.
>>>
>>> The full results should be publicly available. Here is a summary:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HSwtxLhz5HWGMJjMXaO8LQyHJsdMkGbBlRa4fU7Sa34/viewanalytics
>>>
>>> and here is the raw data:
>>>
>>>
>>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rZNNGwupMZTybxKRhukLdgA8VIA8oPlQ7nPk8Gv52Es/edit#gid=348615477
>>>
>>> My interpretation of the data is as follows:
>>>
>>> - The #:keyword syntax is liked fine with a rating of 5.67
>>> - The :keyword syntax is more loved with a rating of 6.9
>>> - But change is not popular, average of 5.1 with high standard deviation
>>> - People that really like #:keyword do not want a change and do not like
>>> :keyword
>>> - People that really like :keyword want a change
>>>
>>> I am genuinely surprised :keyword saw so much support and that change
>>> was so attractive to people.
>>>
>>> Naturally whenever you do stuff like this, you want to ask more
>>> questions, like what about keyword:, what about supporting both, etc.
>>>
>>> Jay
>>>
>>>
>>> On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Neil Van Dyke 
>>> wrote:
>>>
 We are conducting a highly scientific poll.

 The question we want to answer is whether people would like for the
 Racket standard languages to have symbols that begin with the colon
 character (except for the symbol `:`) to read the same has keywords that
 begin with pound-colon.

 That is, when this glorious colon-keywords support is added, instead of
 having to type and look at:

 (foo #:abc 1 #:xyx 42)

 you can choose to bask in the beauty of:

 (foo :abc 1 :xyx 42)

 Then you would be free to use the gorgeous colon-keywords everywhere in
 Racket, including in quick one-line examples in email list posts.

 All people of great aesthetic sense, intellect, and good moral fiber,
 who would naturally like everyone to have the right to use either
 colon-keywords or (eww) pound-colon keywords (in unity, and without
 unnecessary `#lang` schisms!), should answer the quick poll:

 http://goo.gl/forms/Kwl3uZVMsb

 (When the poll question asks "Is it worth changing?", read it is as
 "You are a good person, and you naturally think Racket should support both
 colon-keywords and pound-colon keywords, right?")

 I call upon all freedom-loving Racketeers to stand up and fight for the
 righteous cause of colon-keywords.  The moment to answer this highly
 scientific poll is now.

 Neil V.

 --
 You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
 Groups "Racket Users" group.
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>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Jay McCarthy
>>> Associate Professor
>>> PLT @ CS @ UMass Lowell
>>> http://jeapostrophe.github.io
>>>
>>>"Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing,
>>>   for ye are laying the foundation of a great work.
>>> And out of small things proceedeth that which is great."
>>>   - D 64:33
>>>
>>> --
>>> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
>>> Groups "Racket Users" group.
>>> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving 

Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Andrew Gwozdziewycz]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 10:53 AM, Jay McCarthy 
wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 1:49 PM, Leif Andersen 
> wrote:
>
> > I am genuinely surprised :keyword saw so much support and that change
>> was so attractive to people.
>>
>> That's because of the questions you asked. I saw those questions and said
>> to myself: "Self, I don't care enough about this debate enough to even
>> really fill out these questions." (Although if you had a spot on the pull
>> for the question: "I don't care about this at all, just don't break my
>> code", I would have filled that out.)
>>
>
> I'm interested in your elaboration. I expected someone with your opinion
> to vote something like 5/5/0 because you don't care between the two, but
> don't want a change.
>

Interestingly, a 5 is slightly more negative of 'neutral' in your model of
1-10, than 6, which would be slightly more positive than 'neutral'. I
wonder how many people picked 5 to be completely neutral, not realizing
this subtlety. I guess, the question for me comes down to, "is the volume
in question 1 more towards hate?" Or, assuming that some portion of '5's
recognized the subtlety and were slightly negative of 'neutral', and the
others truly meant 'neutral', it's a dead heat.

(shrug)

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Leif Andersen]

> I am genuinely surprised :keyword saw so much support and that change was
so attractive to people.

That's because of the questions you asked. I saw those questions and said
to myself: "Self, I don't care enough about this debate enough to even
really fill out these questions." (Although if you had a spot on the pull
for the question: "I don't care about this at all, just don't break my
code", I would have filled that out.)


~Leif Andersen

On Thu, Oct 22, 2015 at 1:43 PM, Jay McCarthy 
wrote:

> It has been a little more than a week and we've stopped getting results.
>
> The full results should be publicly available. Here is a summary:
>
>
> https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HSwtxLhz5HWGMJjMXaO8LQyHJsdMkGbBlRa4fU7Sa34/viewanalytics
>
> and here is the raw data:
>
>
> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rZNNGwupMZTybxKRhukLdgA8VIA8oPlQ7nPk8Gv52Es/edit#gid=348615477
>
> My interpretation of the data is as follows:
>
> - The #:keyword syntax is liked fine with a rating of 5.67
> - The :keyword syntax is more loved with a rating of 6.9
> - But change is not popular, average of 5.1 with high standard deviation
> - People that really like #:keyword do not want a change and do not like
> :keyword
> - People that really like :keyword want a change
>
> I am genuinely surprised :keyword saw so much support and that change was
> so attractive to people.
>
> Naturally whenever you do stuff like this, you want to ask more questions,
> like what about keyword:, what about supporting both, etc.
>
> Jay
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 11:50 AM, Neil Van Dyke 
> wrote:
>
>> We are conducting a highly scientific poll.
>>
>> The question we want to answer is whether people would like for the
>> Racket standard languages to have symbols that begin with the colon
>> character (except for the symbol `:`) to read the same has keywords that
>> begin with pound-colon.
>>
>> That is, when this glorious colon-keywords support is added, instead of
>> having to type and look at:
>>
>> (foo #:abc 1 #:xyx 42)
>>
>> you can choose to bask in the beauty of:
>>
>> (foo :abc 1 :xyx 42)
>>
>> Then you would be free to use the gorgeous colon-keywords everywhere in
>> Racket, including in quick one-line examples in email list posts.
>>
>> All people of great aesthetic sense, intellect, and good moral fiber, who
>> would naturally like everyone to have the right to use either
>> colon-keywords or (eww) pound-colon keywords (in unity, and without
>> unnecessary `#lang` schisms!), should answer the quick poll:
>>
>> http://goo.gl/forms/Kwl3uZVMsb
>>
>> (When the poll question asks "Is it worth changing?", read it is as "You
>> are a good person, and you naturally think Racket should support both
>> colon-keywords and pound-colon keywords, right?")
>>
>> I call upon all freedom-loving Racketeers to stand up and fight for the
>> righteous cause of colon-keywords.  The moment to answer this highly
>> scientific poll is now.
>>
>> Neil V.
>>
>> --
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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Gustavo Massaccesi]

I agree. I think that :xyz doesn't look special enough, and with #:xyz
is clear that the reader is doing something special.

Gustavo

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 1:00 PM, Laurent  wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 3:25 PM, Deren Dohoda 
> wrote:
>>
>> I don't have a very strong opinion, it seems like convenient syntax, but
>> half of what draws me to stick with lisps is the low amount of syntax.
>> Pound-colon has a strong line noise quality to it which colons lack,  I
>> admit. But they also have an explicit feel which colons lack.
>
> In particular, they have a "reader syntax" feeling, as most things that
> start with a pound in Racket. I initially didn't like them for keywords, but
> now I'm feeling somewhat ok with them. Having two characters to prefix a
> keyword argument is a lot though, especially when one uses them so much.
>
> Laurent
>
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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Konrad Hinsen]

Matthias Felleisen writes:

 > [I am using past tense because I am sure Fortran is kind of dead
 > now :-).]

There are probably more active Fortran programmers than active Racket
programmers at this time.

 > People wish to conduct a discourse about a domain in the language
 > of their domain, and the more we enable the creation of languages,
 > the closer to the domain language(s) we get.
 > 
 > In the end though, all of these linguistic disconnects can be
 > bridged with a bit of reading code and documentation.

Exactly, just like for human languages. An added condition for
programming languages is interoperability: I am fine with reading
someone else's code in a different dialect, but I certainly do not
want to rewrite it in my own dialect just to be able to use it.

For me the strongest point of Racket is that it encourages linguistic
diversity while maintaining (nearly enforcing) interoperability.  My
dream language environment would go one step further and provide a
second more low-level interoperability layer for performance-oriented
dialects (C/Fortran style).

Konrad.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Greg Hendershott]

> Code snippets get detached from `#lang` lines all the time, especially in
> sometimes-terse 'social media' like email, chat, blogs, Twitter, etc.

Although this can be a problem, I think it's already a problem in
Racket -- and generally.

Example: Spend time answering a Racket question on Stack Overflow.
Discover it's N/A because they didn't mention they're using `#lang
bsl`. /headdesk.  Although often there are clues in the code itself --
or in meta-data like the date or the user's rep -- sometimes you just
can't tell.

But even without `#lang`, there's the plain old way this can be a
problem. Let's say `#lang racket/base` does add `:keywords` in 7.1, as
you want. Hooray! You post a code snippet using them. I try it with
7.0. Boo!

Non-trivial code snippets have assumptions. The `#lang` line is
actually a way for people to supply some of that explicitly in code --
which is good. (Of course, regardless of whether they can do so using
#lang or prose, people will forget to include information on teh
interwebs. I am currently working hard to solve this problem
generally.)

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Konrad Hinsen]

Matthias Felleisen writes:

 > > For me the strongest point of Racket is that it encourages linguistic
 > > diversity while maintaining (nearly enforcing) interoperability.  My
 > > dream language environment would go one step further and provide a
 > > second more low-level interoperability layer for performance-oriented
 > > dialects (C/Fortran style).
 > 
 > 
 > Does the existing FFI provide you with enough efficiency when needed? 

Yes, but I have to write C code outside of Racket. I'd like to be able
to define a #lang in Racket that operates at the level of C
(i.e. machine-level data types, no GC, etc.), and I'd like to generate
specialized code in that low-level language from my standard Racket
code.

Lush (http://lush.sourceforge.net/) has something like that but it
seems kind of dead now. A while ago I saw the annoucement for a new
language called Terra (http://terralang.org/) that is a low-level
complement to Lua, but I haven't taken a closer look yet.

Konrad.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Matthias Felleisen]

On Oct 16, 2015, at 9:24 AM, Konrad Hinsen  wrote:

> Matthias Felleisen writes:
> 
>>> For me the strongest point of Racket is that it encourages linguistic
>>> diversity while maintaining (nearly enforcing) interoperability.  My
>>> dream language environment would go one step further and provide a
>>> second more low-level interoperability layer for performance-oriented
>>> dialects (C/Fortran style).
>> 
>> 
>> Does the existing FFI provide you with enough efficiency when needed? 
> 
> Yes, but I have to write C code outside of Racket. I'd like to be able
> to define a #lang in Racket that operates at the level of C
> (i.e. machine-level data types, no GC, etc.), and I'd like to generate
> specialized code in that low-level language from my standard Racket
> code.


Yes, we want to get there. See "full spectrum language" in other reply. 





> Lush (http://lush.sourceforge.net/) has something like that but it
> seems kind of dead now. A while ago I saw the annoucement for a new
> language called Terra (http://terralang.org/) that is a low-level
> complement to Lua, but I haven't taken a closer look yet.

Thanks 

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Matthias Felleisen]

[ message quoted in reversed for obvious reasons ]


On Oct 16, 2015, at 7:18 AM, Konrad Hinsen  wrote:

> Matthias Felleisen writes:
>> People wish to conduct a discourse about a domain in the language
>> of their domain, and the more we enable the creation of languages,
>> the closer to the domain language(s) we get.
>> 
>> In the end though, all of these linguistic disconnects can be
>> bridged with a bit of reading code and documentation.
> 
> Exactly, just like for human languages. An added condition for
> programming languages is interoperability: I am fine with reading
> someone else's code in a different dialect, but I certainly do not
> want to rewrite it in my own dialect just to be able to use it.
> 
> For me the strongest point of Racket is that it encourages linguistic
> diversity while maintaining (nearly enforcing) interoperability.  My
> dream language environment would go one step further and provide a
> second more low-level interoperability layer for performance-oriented
> dialects (C/Fortran style).


Does the existing FFI provide you with enough efficiency when needed? 

;; 

Onward, to the fun part. 


>> [I am using past tense because I am sure Fortran is kind of dead
>> now :-).]
> 
> There are probably more active Fortran programmers than active Racket
> programmers at this time.


If that's all you guys can come up with (ref to Fortran article), 
then I am removing the brackets from my original message and apologize
for beating a dead horse. Even Fortran doesn't deserve this. 



-- Matthias


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Re: Fortran (Was: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords)

[Matthias Felleisen]

This would indeed fit into the "full spectrum" part of the Racket "stack" as 
presented in the manifesto and especially the presentation as given at (fifth 
RacketCon). 

-- Matthias







On Oct 15, 2015, at 9:11 PM, Neil Van Dyke  wrote:

> Regarding Fortran, about 3 weeks ago, I looked into implementing a `#lang 
> fortran77` or `#lang fortran90`.
> 
> Functionality-wise, it looks doable; speed-wise, not so great.  I have no 
> further need for this, but it's an interesting practical/hobby project 
> someone might want to pursue.
> 
> (For easy intermixing of Fortran and Racket code, there are boxing and 
> marshalling inefficiencies, especially when you combine that with code that 
> depends on behavior like shared mutations of very byte/word-layout-sensitive 
> overlaying/sharing of dissimilar types on the same memory.  Though there do 
> appear to be lots of optimization opportunities, when you can prove that some 
> Fortran-specific language complications don't apply, to particular 
> procedures/variables/values/calls.  The control flow construct mapping is 
> relatively easy.  F77 and F90 parsing are both doable, and potentially a 
> little fun.  I didn't get all the way into all the things that can be done 
> with arrays, and there might be other tricky Fortran features I didn't get 
> to.  It would be a substantial project, for either a good practical reason or 
> a hobby.)
> 
> Neil V.
> 
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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[William G Hatch]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 03:24:06PM +0200, Konrad Hinsen wrote:

Matthias Felleisen writes:

> > For me the strongest point of Racket is that it encourages linguistic
> > diversity while maintaining (nearly enforcing) interoperability.  My
> > dream language environment would go one step further and provide a
> > second more low-level interoperability layer for performance-oriented
> > dialects (C/Fortran style).
>
>
> Does the existing FFI provide you with enough efficiency when needed?

Yes, but I have to write C code outside of Racket. I'd like to be able
to define a #lang in Racket that operates at the level of C
(i.e. machine-level data types, no GC, etc.), and I'd like to generate
specialized code in that low-level language from my standard Racket
code.


FYI, I'm a grad student at Utah with Matthew, and my current project
is a #lang pre-racket that compiles to C.  It hasn't really gotten off
the ground yet because I've been busy with classes and fellowship
applications, but in the relatively near future we should have this.

William

P.S.  On the point of keywords, I think having #lang colon-kw  is
the right approach.  If people worry about living the dream of Haskell's
Lens package, you could make another one that includes your common
subset of add-on reader features together.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Hendrik Boom]

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 08:21:09AM -0600, William G Hatch wrote:
> 
> FYI, I'm a grad student at Utah with Matthew, and my current project
> is a #lang pre-racket that compiles to C.  It hasn't really gotten off
> the ground yet because I've been busy with classes and fellowship
> applications, but in the relatively near future we should have this.

You should look at Gambit.  It is a Scheme that compiles to C.  It's 
probably different from what you're doing, but almost ccertainly 
related.

-- hendrik

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Sean Kanaley]

While were at it, can we make :long-keyword [3] => :long-keyword
[long-keyword 3] ?

And can we make define => =, and = => == ?

In general, can we "Huffman encode" forms by average form usage frequency?

(But seriously, the first one would be nice)

On Fri, Oct 16, 2015 at 6:05 PM, Gustavo Massaccesi 
wrote:

> I agree. I think that :xyz doesn't look special enough, and with #:xyz
> is clear that the reader is doing something special.
>
> Gustavo
>
> On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 1:00 PM, Laurent  wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 3:25 PM, Deren Dohoda 
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> I don't have a very strong opinion, it seems like convenient syntax, but
> >> half of what draws me to stick with lisps is the low amount of syntax.
> >> Pound-colon has a strong line noise quality to it which colons lack,  I
> >> admit. But they also have an explicit feel which colons lack.
> >
> > In particular, they have a "reader syntax" feeling, as most things that
> > start with a pound in Racket. I initially didn't like them for keywords,
> but
> > now I'm feeling somewhat ok with them. Having two characters to prefix a
> > keyword argument is a lot though, especially when one uses them so much.
> >
> > Laurent
> >
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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Laurent]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 3:25 PM, Deren Dohoda 
wrote:

> I don't have a very strong opinion, it seems like convenient syntax, but
> half of what draws me to stick with lisps is the low amount of syntax.
> Pound-colon has a strong line noise quality to it which colons lack,  I
> admit. But they also have an explicit feel which colons lack.
>
In particular, they have a "reader syntax" feeling, as most things that
start with a pound in Racket. I initially didn't like them for keywords,
but now I'm feeling somewhat ok with them. Having two characters to prefix
a keyword argument is a lot though, especially when one uses them so much.

Laurent

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Deren Dohoda]

I don't have a very strong opinion, it seems like convenient syntax, but
half of what draws me to stick with lisps is the low amount of syntax.
Pound-colon has a strong line noise quality to it which colons lack,  I
admit. But they also have an explicit feel which colons lack.

Inclusion or exclusion of this will not really affect me though. I will
probably stick to pound-colon.

Deren

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Fortran (Was: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords)

[Neil Van Dyke]

Regarding Fortran, about 3 weeks ago, I looked into implementing a 
`#lang fortran77` or `#lang fortran90`.


Functionality-wise, it looks doable; speed-wise, not so great.  I have 
no further need for this, but it's an interesting practical/hobby 
project someone might want to pursue.


(For easy intermixing of Fortran and Racket code, there are boxing and 
marshalling inefficiencies, especially when you combine that with code 
that depends on behavior like shared mutations of very 
byte/word-layout-sensitive overlaying/sharing of dissimilar types on the 
same memory.  Though there do appear to be lots of optimization 
opportunities, when you can prove that some Fortran-specific language 
complications don't apply, to particular 
procedures/variables/values/calls.  The control flow construct mapping 
is relatively easy.  F77 and F90 parsing are both doable, and 
potentially a little fun.  I didn't get all the way into all the things 
that can be done with arrays, and there might be other tricky Fortran 
features I didn't get to.  It would be a substantial project, for either 
a good practical reason or a hobby.)


Neil V.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 05:18:22PM -0400, Matthias Felleisen wrote:
...
...
> A common reason for fragmentation is the creation and use of function 
> libraries. For example, a Fortran programmer in the field of physical 
> simulations used different function libraries than one in commercial 
> check processing. When the former read the code of the latter, he 
> invariably experienced some form of alienation. [I am using past tense 
> because I am sure Fortran is kind of dead now :-).]

No, Fortran is not dead.  It's he preferred language used in heavy 
numerical computation because of its extreme efficiency for this class 
of application.

See 
http://arstechnica.com/science/2014/05/scientific-computings-future-can-any-coding-language-top-a-1950s-behemoth/

Fun that you mentioned Fortran; the article contains the sentence
"Originally specified in 1958, Lisp is the second-oldest high-level 
programming language in widespread use today; only Fortran is older"

credited to Dr. Joey Paquet.

-- hendrik

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Neil Van Dyke]

Hendrik Boom wrote on 10/15/2015 01:25 PM:

I'd like to ask:

What do the Scheme standards say about this?
What do Lisp standards say about this?

I don't know the answers to these questons, though maybe I should, and
Racket is not a standard Scheme, but I think these answers should
at least guide us.


Racket is all grown-up as its own language/platform now, and I 
definitely wouldn't encumber Racket evolution with CL or RnRS 
decisions.  (Though those other Lisp family subtrees have their own 
noble merits.)


I just found a paper that lays out Racket's pound-colon-prefix 
rationale: Flatt, Barzilay, "Keyword and Optional Arguments in PLT 
Scheme", http://www.ccs.neu.edu/racket/pubs/scheme2009-fb.pdf


But to start to answer your question, CL has long used colon-prefix for 
the visual appearance of keyword arguments.


Most Schemes don't agree with each other on keywords, though there is a 
tendency towards programmer-controlled selectivity among multiple 
conventions for what keyword arguments look like:
* I don't see keyword arguments in a quick skim of R7RS (although Google 
does find random claims that R7RS has keyword arguments, perhaps 
referring to committee discussion).
* Gambit Scheme has colon-suffix, plus some selectivity for colon-prefix 
(and uses pound-bang for some different purpose?). 
http://www.iro.umontreal.ca/~gambit/doc/gambit.html#Keyword-syntax

* Marc Feeley's (of Gambit fame) SRFI-88 and SRFI-89 propose colon-suffix.
* Guile supports all three conventions, selectively. 
http://www.gnu.org/software/guile/manual/html_node/Keyword-Read-Syntax.html
* Chicken uses pound-bang and selectively either colon-prefix or 
colon-suffix. 
http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/4/Non-standard%20read%20syntax#keyword
* Gauche has colon-prefix. 
http://practical-scheme.net/gauche/man/gauche-refe_5.html

* Chibi Scheme seems to use colon-suffix.

The Scheme situation is discouraging, and I'm glad that Racket (PLT 
Scheme) went ahead and did something.  However, I wish we all had cared 
slightly less about R5RS compatibility and such back then (especially 
since R5RS compatibility has been abandoned in much larger ways in 
Racket today, such as in pair mutability).  Perhaps I could've been 
using colon-prefix happily the last several years. And also, no one 
would have introduced the few problematic colon-symbols that now have to 
be considered before adding colon-prefix keywords today.


I'm still interested in adding colon-prefix keywords to `#lang racket` 
and `#lang racket/base`, ASAP, if the designers consider that 
worthwhile.  If it's not considered worthwhile at this time, then I'm 
tempted to finally do it with a package of my own writing, though that 
might effectively fragment the language.


(BTW, in response to an earlier comment regarding fragmentation, I think 
that `#lang foo-reader racket` and `#lang foo-replacing-racket-reader` 
are equivalent in immediate fragmentation effect.  What's more 
significant to fragmentation is when different people are using 
*incompatible source dialects* in snippets of code in forum posts, 
documentation, etc. -- not what the `#lang` line looks like in a 
complete module, if the code below that line would be the same 
regardless, and the module still interoperates across source dialects.)


Neil V.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Eli Barzilay]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 3:37 PM, Anthony Carrico  wrote:
> I didn't really want to get dragged into this, but keep in mind that:
>
> (symbol? #'test) ; -> #f
>
> IIRC the common lisp keywords you admire are symbols. I think that the
> proposed syntax confuses symbols and keywords, which are distinct
> types.

Yes, CL keywords are symbols, but there's no confusion since they are
very different from regular symbols.

To complete the details for whoever might be interested, in CL symbols
can be written as `foo:bar` for the (externally visible) "bar" symbol
from the "foo" package.  Symbols with no colon are implicitly in the
current package.  This is why `:foo` makes sense for keywords: it's the
"foo" symbol from the special keyword package -- special since it has no
name, and since all of its symbols are visible outside.  Now, consider
the fact that CL equates "identifiers" with "symbols", and uses packages
as a half-assed[*] attempt to get some sanity with my code not stepping
over your code -- and that should explain why `:foo` and `foo` are both
"the same type" but are very different in nature -- to the point that
your argument of a distinct type doesn't hold well in CL (and in Racket
too, since Neil's suggestion would make `:foo` not be a symbol).

Notes:

1. I use [*] in a technical way -- I once tried to explain hygiene to
   CLers by saying that it's as if each scope has its own (anonymous)
   package.

2. Also, talking about what counts as a symbol in CL is not too
   productive.  CL can surprise you with gems like: (symbol? (cdr '(1)))
   returning true.

3. I didn't see it mentioned so: the original motivation for `#:foo` was
   an attempt to avoid the argument of `:foo` vs `foo:` vs "either one"
   vs whatever.

-- 
((x=>x(x))(x=>x(x)))   Eli Barzilay:
http://barzilay.org/   Maze is Life!

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Matthias Felleisen]

On Oct 15, 2015, at 5:01 PM, Neil Van Dyke  wrote:

> BTW, in response to an earlier comment regarding fragmentation, I think that 
> `#lang foo-reader racket` and `#lang foo-replacing-racket-reader` are 
> equivalent in immediate fragmentation effect.  What's more significant to 
> fragmentation is when different people are using *incompatible source 
> dialects* in snippets of code in forum posts, documentation, etc. -- not what 
> the `#lang` line looks like in a complete module, if the code below that line 
> would be the same regardless, and the module still interoperates across 
> source dialects.


Neil and everyone else, 

Communities around extensible languages naturally fragment. The very moment you 
provide a mini-linguist, which is what a programmer really is, with the means 
to define nouns and verbs, the fragmentation starts. A common reason for 
fragmentation is the creation and use of function libraries. For example, a 
Fortran programmer in the field of physical simulations used different function 
libraries than one in commercial check processing. When the former read the 
code of the latter, he invariably experienced some form of alienation. [I am 
using past tense because I am sure Fortran is kind of dead now :-).]

When you allow programmers to define even more advanced aspects of a language 
-- with means such as macros -- you get even more fragmentation. People wish to 
conduct a discourse about a domain in the language of their domain, and the 
more we enable the creation of languages, the closer to the domain language(s) 
we get. 

In the end though, all of these linguistic disconnects can be bridged with a 
bit of reading code and documentation. 

In contrast to linguistic fragmentation, programming language communities may 
also experience social fragmentation. At the simplest level, they may disagree 
on the meaning of some feature. I think the order of evaluation in a function 
application is an example of the right kind here. They may disagree with the 
philosophy of language design in the standardization sense. The rollback of 
R6RS to the quasi-R5RS standard of R7RS is an example of this kind. This 
technical disagreements lead to forks in the tree of language development that 
are much more serious than the linguistic differentiation above. 

My take is that #lang colon-kw-mixn racket/base is a dialect in the way South 
German or Swiss German relates to High German (a normative language that nobody 
speaks except for some pretty-looking dumb TV announcers perhaps). The R6RS vs 
R7RS differentiation of Scheme vs Clojure separation is more like English and 
German. 

With this said, I am fine with North Germans. I just wished they learned to 
speak properly -- Matthias :-) 

p.s. Similar analogies could be drawn with American social dialects. But as a 
Man from Away, I'll stay away from this hot topic. 

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Anthony Carrico]

In case I'm being to oblique, I'm trying to point out that:
  (equal? '#:test ':test) ; -> #f
which means that the proposal will certainly break things.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Hendrik Boom]

On Thu, Oct 15, 2015 at 05:48:17AM +0200, Pierpaolo Bernardi wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 11:34 PM, Neil Van Dyke  wrote:
> > Alex Knauth wrote on 10/14/2015 04:37 PM:
> >>
> >> You can use
> >> #lang colon-kw racket
> >> for :kw syntax, and
> >> #lang kw-colon racket
> >> for kw: syntax.
> >
> >
> > If the standard `#lang racket` and `#lang racket/base` don't support
> > `:keyword` out of the box -- but instead some alternative reader or forked
> > #lang is required -- then we would expect error messages about `:keyword`
> > not working to be an FAQ on the email list.  That's one intuitive example of
> > the kinds of problems that arise.
> 
> But supporting this out of the box in #lang racket would invalidate
> existing racket programs, no?

I'd like to ask:

What do the Scheme standards say about this?
What do Lisp standards say about this?

I don't know the answers to these questons, though maybe I should, and 
Racket is not a standard Scheme, but I think these answers should 
at least guide us.

-- hendrik

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Anthony Carrico]

I didn't really want to get dragged into this, but keep in mind that:

(symbol? #'test) ; -> #f

IIRC the common lisp keywords you admire are symbols. I think that the
proposed syntax confuses symbols and keywords, which are distinct types.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Anthony Carrico]

On 10/15/2015 03:37 PM, Anthony Carrico wrote:
> I didn't really want to get dragged into this, but keep in mind that:
> 
> (symbol? #'test) ; -> #f

err... (symbol? '#:test) ; -> #f

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Anthony Carrico]

On 10/15/2015 03:39 PM, Anthony Carrico wrote:
> On 10/15/2015 03:37 PM, Anthony Carrico wrote:
>> I didn't really want to get dragged into this, but keep in mind that:
>>
>> (symbol? #'test) ; -> #f
> 
> err... (symbol? '#:test) ; -> #f
> 

Yes. I found this in the Common Lisp Hyperspec:

(symbolp :test) =>  true

http://www.lispworks.com/documentation/HyperSpec/Body/f_symbol.htm#symbolp

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[racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Neil Van Dyke]

We are conducting a highly scientific poll.

The question we want to answer is whether people would like for the 
Racket standard languages to have symbols that begin with the colon 
character (except for the symbol `:`) to read the same has keywords that 
begin with pound-colon.


That is, when this glorious colon-keywords support is added, instead of 
having to type and look at:


(foo #:abc 1 #:xyx 42)

you can choose to bask in the beauty of:

(foo :abc 1 :xyx 42)

Then you would be free to use the gorgeous colon-keywords everywhere in 
Racket, including in quick one-line examples in email list posts.


All people of great aesthetic sense, intellect, and good moral fiber, 
who would naturally like everyone to have the right to use either 
colon-keywords or (eww) pound-colon keywords (in unity, and without 
unnecessary `#lang` schisms!), should answer the quick poll:


http://goo.gl/forms/Kwl3uZVMsb

(When the poll question asks "Is it worth changing?", read it is as "You 
are a good person, and you naturally think Racket should support both 
colon-keywords and pound-colon keywords, right?")


I call upon all freedom-loving Racketeers to stand up and fight for the 
righteous cause of colon-keywords.  The moment to answer this highly 
scientific poll is now.


Neil V.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Martin DeMello]

Chicken scheme has an option for that:
http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/4/Non-standard%20read%20syntax#keyword

I'm a fan; it makes the code pretty pleasant to read.

martin

On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 9:29 AM, Jukka Tuominen <
jukka.tuomi...@finndesign.fi> wrote:

> Yoda like that would, but to me it looks backwards. How about...?
> key: value
>
> br, jukka
> UX Manager :)
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> > On 14.10.2015, at 18.50, Neil Van Dyke  wrote:
> >
> > We are conducting a highly scientific poll.
> >
> > The question we want to answer is whether people would like for the
> Racket standard languages to have symbols that begin with the colon
> character (except for the symbol `:`) to read the same has keywords that
> begin with pound-colon.
> >
> > That is, when this glorious colon-keywords support is added, instead of
> having to type and look at:
> >
> >(foo #:abc 1 #:xyx 42)
> >
> > you can choose to bask in the beauty of:
> >
> >(foo :abc 1 :xyx 42)
> >
> > Then you would be free to use the gorgeous colon-keywords everywhere in
> Racket, including in quick one-line examples in email list posts.
> >
> > All people of great aesthetic sense, intellect, and good moral fiber,
> who would naturally like everyone to have the right to use either
> colon-keywords or (eww) pound-colon keywords (in unity, and without
> unnecessary `#lang` schisms!), should answer the quick poll:
> >
> >http://goo.gl/forms/Kwl3uZVMsb
> >
> > (When the poll question asks "Is it worth changing?", read it is as "You
> are a good person, and you naturally think Racket should support both
> colon-keywords and pound-colon keywords, right?")
> >
> > I call upon all freedom-loving Racketeers to stand up and fight for the
> righteous cause of colon-keywords.  The moment to answer this highly
> scientific poll is now.
> >
> > Neil V.
> >
> > --
> > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
> Groups "Racket Users" group.
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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Alex Knauth]

Racket has an option for that. It's a meta-language that I made this morning.

#lang colon-kw racket

You can use it for one or two files without messing up everything else. 


> On Oct 14, 2015, at 2:19 PM, Martin DeMello  wrote:
> 
> Chicken scheme has an option for that: 
> http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/4/Non-standard%20read%20syntax#keyword 
> 
> 
> I'm a fan; it makes the code pretty pleasant to read.
> 
> martin
> 
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 9:29 AM, Jukka Tuominen  > wrote:
> Yoda like that would, but to me it looks backwards. How about...?
> key: value
> 
> br, jukka
> UX Manager :)
> 
> Sent from my iPhone
> 
> > On 14.10.2015, at 18.50, Neil Van Dyke  > > wrote:
> >
> > We are conducting a highly scientific poll.
> >
> > The question we want to answer is whether people would like for the Racket 
> > standard languages to have symbols that begin with the colon character 
> > (except for the symbol `:`) to read the same has keywords that begin with 
> > pound-colon.
> >
> > That is, when this glorious colon-keywords support is added, instead of 
> > having to type and look at:
> >
> >(foo #:abc 1 #:xyx 42)
> >
> > you can choose to bask in the beauty of:
> >
> >(foo :abc 1 :xyx 42)
> >
> > Then you would be free to use the gorgeous colon-keywords everywhere in 
> > Racket, including in quick one-line examples in email list posts.
> >
> > All people of great aesthetic sense, intellect, and good moral fiber, who 
> > would naturally like everyone to have the right to use either 
> > colon-keywords or (eww) pound-colon keywords (in unity, and without 
> > unnecessary `#lang` schisms!), should answer the quick poll:
> >
> >http://goo.gl/forms/Kwl3uZVMsb 
> >
> > (When the poll question asks "Is it worth changing?", read it is as "You 
> > are a good person, and you naturally think Racket should support both 
> > colon-keywords and pound-colon keywords, right?")
> >
> > I call upon all freedom-loving Racketeers to stand up and fight for the 
> > righteous cause of colon-keywords.  The moment to answer this highly 
> > scientific poll is now.
> >
> > Neil V.
> >

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Neil Van Dyke]

I find `keyword:` kinda pretty, too (I first used them in Smalltalk, 
though Smalltalk syntax takes it a huge step further).


But, IIRC, it was Joe Marshall who pointed out (one of the past times 
keywords were discussed) that `:keyword`s are visually less ambiguous in 
Lisp syntax when use of a form with multiple keyword arguments is split 
across multiple lines.


That point moved me back to the tried-and-true Lisp `:keyword`, at least 
for Lisp code.


Neil V.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Jukka Tuominen]

Yoda like that would, but to me it looks backwards. How about...?
key: value

br, jukka
UX Manager :)

Sent from my iPhone

> On 14.10.2015, at 18.50, Neil Van Dyke  wrote:
> 
> We are conducting a highly scientific poll.
> 
> The question we want to answer is whether people would like for the Racket 
> standard languages to have symbols that begin with the colon character 
> (except for the symbol `:`) to read the same has keywords that begin with 
> pound-colon.
> 
> That is, when this glorious colon-keywords support is added, instead of 
> having to type and look at:
> 
>(foo #:abc 1 #:xyx 42)
> 
> you can choose to bask in the beauty of:
> 
>(foo :abc 1 :xyx 42)
> 
> Then you would be free to use the gorgeous colon-keywords everywhere in 
> Racket, including in quick one-line examples in email list posts.
> 
> All people of great aesthetic sense, intellect, and good moral fiber, who 
> would naturally like everyone to have the right to use either colon-keywords 
> or (eww) pound-colon keywords (in unity, and without unnecessary `#lang` 
> schisms!), should answer the quick poll:
> 
>http://goo.gl/forms/Kwl3uZVMsb
> 
> (When the poll question asks "Is it worth changing?", read it is as "You are 
> a good person, and you naturally think Racket should support both 
> colon-keywords and pound-colon keywords, right?")
> 
> I call upon all freedom-loving Racketeers to stand up and fight for the 
> righteous cause of colon-keywords.  The moment to answer this highly 
> scientific poll is now.
> 
> Neil V.
> 
> -- 
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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Jay McCarthy]

I briefly considered including Objective-C/Smalltalk style keywords in
the form too. I haven't extensively programmed with them, but I find
them kind of beautiful.

Jay

On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 12:29 PM, Jukka Tuominen
 wrote:
> Yoda like that would, but to me it looks backwards. How about...?
> key: value
>
> br, jukka
> UX Manager :)
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
>> On 14.10.2015, at 18.50, Neil Van Dyke  wrote:
>>
>> We are conducting a highly scientific poll.
>>
>> The question we want to answer is whether people would like for the Racket 
>> standard languages to have symbols that begin with the colon character 
>> (except for the symbol `:`) to read the same has keywords that begin with 
>> pound-colon.
>>
>> That is, when this glorious colon-keywords support is added, instead of 
>> having to type and look at:
>>
>>(foo #:abc 1 #:xyx 42)
>>
>> you can choose to bask in the beauty of:
>>
>>(foo :abc 1 :xyx 42)
>>
>> Then you would be free to use the gorgeous colon-keywords everywhere in 
>> Racket, including in quick one-line examples in email list posts.
>>
>> All people of great aesthetic sense, intellect, and good moral fiber, who 
>> would naturally like everyone to have the right to use either colon-keywords 
>> or (eww) pound-colon keywords (in unity, and without unnecessary `#lang` 
>> schisms!), should answer the quick poll:
>>
>>http://goo.gl/forms/Kwl3uZVMsb
>>
>> (When the poll question asks "Is it worth changing?", read it is as "You are 
>> a good person, and you naturally think Racket should support both 
>> colon-keywords and pound-colon keywords, right?")
>>
>> I call upon all freedom-loving Racketeers to stand up and fight for the 
>> righteous cause of colon-keywords.  The moment to answer this highly 
>> scientific poll is now.
>>
>> Neil V.
>>
>> --
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>> "Racket Users" group.
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>> email to racket-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com.
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-- 
Jay McCarthy
Associate Professor
PLT @ CS @ UMass Lowell
http://jeapostrophe.github.io

   "Wherefore, be not weary in well-doing,
  for ye are laying the foundation of a great work.
And out of small things proceedeth that which is great."
  - D 64:33

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Alex Knauth]

You can use
#lang colon-kw racket
for :kw syntax, and
#lang kw-colon racket
for kw: syntax.

They are compose-able as well, so you can use
#lang colon-kw kw-colon racket
to let :kw and kw: both work in the same file.


> On Oct 14, 2015, at 2:37 PM, Alex Knauth  wrote:
> 
> Racket has an option for that. It's a meta-language that I made this morning.
> 
> #lang colon-kw racket
> 
> You can use it for one or two files without messing up everything else. 
> 
> 
>> On Oct 14, 2015, at 2:19 PM, Martin DeMello > > wrote:
>> 
>> Chicken scheme has an option for that: 
>> http://wiki.call-cc.org/man/4/Non-standard%20read%20syntax#keyword 
>> 
>> 
>> I'm a fan; it makes the code pretty pleasant to read.
>> 
>> martin
>> 
>> On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 9:29 AM, Jukka Tuominen 
>> > wrote:
>> Yoda like that would, but to me it looks backwards. How about...?
>> key: value
>> 
>> br, jukka
>> UX Manager :)
>> 
>> Sent from my iPhone
>> 
>> > On 14.10.2015, at 18.50, Neil Van Dyke > > > wrote:
>> >
>> > We are conducting a highly scientific poll.
>> >
>> > The question we want to answer is whether people would like for the Racket 
>> > standard languages to have symbols that begin with the colon character 
>> > (except for the symbol `:`) to read the same has keywords that begin with 
>> > pound-colon.
>> >
>> > That is, when this glorious colon-keywords support is added, instead of 
>> > having to type and look at:
>> >
>> >(foo #:abc 1 #:xyx 42)
>> >
>> > you can choose to bask in the beauty of:
>> >
>> >(foo :abc 1 :xyx 42)
>> >
>> > Then you would be free to use the gorgeous colon-keywords everywhere in 
>> > Racket, including in quick one-line examples in email list posts.
>> >
>> > All people of great aesthetic sense, intellect, and good moral fiber, who 
>> > would naturally like everyone to have the right to use either 
>> > colon-keywords or (eww) pound-colon keywords (in unity, and without 
>> > unnecessary `#lang` schisms!), should answer the quick poll:
>> >
>> >http://goo.gl/forms/Kwl3uZVMsb 
>> >
>> > (When the poll question asks "Is it worth changing?", read it is as "You 
>> > are a good person, and you naturally think Racket should support both 
>> > colon-keywords and pound-colon keywords, right?")
>> >
>> > I call upon all freedom-loving Racketeers to stand up and fight for the 
>> > righteous cause of colon-keywords.  The moment to answer this highly 
>> > scientific poll is now.
>> >
>> > Neil V.
>> >
> 
> 
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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Neil Van Dyke]

Alex Knauth wrote on 10/14/2015 04:37 PM:

You can use
#lang colon-kw racket
for :kw syntax, and
#lang kw-colon racket
for kw: syntax.


If the standard `#lang racket` and `#lang racket/base` don't support 
`:keyword` out of the box -- but instead some alternative reader or 
forked #lang is required -- then we would expect error messages about 
`:keyword` not working to be an FAQ on the email list.  That's one 
intuitive example of the kinds of problems that arise.


Code snippets get detached from `#lang` lines all the time, especially 
in sometimes-terse 'social media' like email, chat, blogs, Twitter, etc.


I know Racket (I think it was still PLT Scheme then) had its reasons for 
introducing an unconventional keyword syntax at the time, and I've 
therefore tried years of pound-colon (with great discomfort in the 
rear), but pound-colon still hasn't grown on me.  I'm very ready for the 
conventional colon-keyword syntax to also be supported in `#lang racket` 
and `#lang racket/base`.


I very much appreciate diligence about backward-compatibility, but I'm 
not actually aware of any Racket code that actually uses colon-symbol 
for any purpose other than as a keyword.  And the ones that use 
colon-symbol as makeshift keywords are few and far between, and only for 
historical reasons, from before PLT Scheme had keywords.  (Or from some 
obscure super-portable R5RS Scheme SRFI, again because R5RS Scheme 
didn't have keywords, and they were just improvising keywords by using 
symbols in the conventional way, i.e., `:keyword`.)


Neil V.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Alex Knauth]

> On Oct 14, 2015, at 5:34 PM, Neil Van Dyke  wrote:

> I very much appreciate diligence about backward-compatibility, but I'm not 
> actually aware of any Racket code that actually uses colon-symbol for any 
> purpose other than as a keyword.  And the ones that use colon-symbol as 
> makeshift keywords are few and far between, and only for historical reasons, 
> from before PLT Scheme had keywords.  (Or from some obscure super-portable 
> R5RS Scheme SRFI, again because R5RS Scheme didn't have keywords, and they 
> were just improvising keywords by using symbols in the conventional way, 
> i.e., `:keyword`.)

Have you seen syntax-parse?
Jens Axel already mentioned (require (prefix-in : parser-tools/lex-sre) on the 
dev list.
There's also :print-type expr, :type, :query-type/args, and :query-type/result 
from typed racket.
And also, searching : in the package docs gives me this:
http://pkg-build.racket-lang.org/doc/search/index.html?q=%3A 


It's not worth changing the default for all of racket just to avoid putting 
#lang colon-kw racket at the top of a program. 

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Neil Van Dyke]

Alex Knauth wrote on 10/14/2015 05:57 PM:


On Oct 14, 2015, at 5:34 PM, Neil Van Dyke > wrote:


I very much appreciate diligence about backward-compatibility, but 
I'm not actually aware of any Racket code that actually uses 
colon-symbol for any purpose other than as a keyword.  And the ones 
that use colon-symbol as makeshift keywords are few and far between, 
and only for historical reasons, from before PLT Scheme had keywords. 
 (Or from some obscure super-portable R5RS Scheme SRFI, again because 
R5RS Scheme didn't have keywords, and they were just improvising 
keywords by using symbols in the conventional way, i.e., `:keyword`.)


Have you seen syntax-parse?


Yes, `syntax-parse` is probably my favorite modern addition to Racket, 
ever.  Why are colon-keywords a problem?


Jens Axel already mentioned (require (prefix-in:parser-tools/lex-sre) 
on the dev list.
There's also :print-type expr, :type, :query-type/args, and 
:query-type/result from typed racket.


Those are two unfortunate things, and potentially showstoppers.  I think 
the convention of colon-keywords in Lisps, even in Scheme dialects, 
predates both of those.  But possession is nine-tenths of the law, so I 
agree that these would have to be looked at and addressed.



And also, searching : in the package docs gives me this:
http://pkg-build.racket-lang.org/doc/search/index.html?q=%3A 



Except for some cryptic-looking non-idiomatic identifiers in 
`math/array`, I don't see a problem in that search.  (Even the liberties 
of `math/array` could even be accommodated, if keywords are made 
something like `^:[a-zA-Z].*$`.  And the `srfi/42` ones are the main 
example I had in mind when I said before, about SRFIs and improvised 
keywords.)




It's not worth changing the default for all of racket just to avoid 
putting #lang colon-kw racket at the top of a program.




I currently have the opposite opinion on that point.

Partly because, before I would use `#lang colon-kw racket/base` at the 
top of each of my modules, I would use `#lang paddle/base`. Then the 
effective forking of the language is perhaps more apparent, even though 
the actual texts below the respective differing `#lang` lines would be 
identical in both cases.  Because I really-really don't want to 
effectively fork the Racket dialect in which people write snippets on 
email lists and such, that's why I'm investing in the energy-intensive 
town hall dialogue that's usually involved in making any programming 
language change when it's not simply done by fiat and announced as a 
done deal. :)


Neil V.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Daniel Prager]

Something for consideration in Racket 2?

I've gotten used #:keywords, but initially felt that they were inelegant.

Dan

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Pierpaolo Bernardi]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 11:34 PM, Neil Van Dyke  wrote:
> Alex Knauth wrote on 10/14/2015 04:37 PM:
>>
>> You can use
>> #lang colon-kw racket
>> for :kw syntax, and
>> #lang kw-colon racket
>> for kw: syntax.
>
>
> If the standard `#lang racket` and `#lang racket/base` don't support
> `:keyword` out of the box -- but instead some alternative reader or forked
> #lang is required -- then we would expect error messages about `:keyword`
> not working to be an FAQ on the email list.  That's one intuitive example of
> the kinds of problems that arise.

But supporting this out of the box in #lang racket would invalidate
existing racket programs, no?

That's another example  :)

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Jack Firth]

On Wednesday, October 14, 2015 at 3:45:46 PM UTC-7, Neil Van Dyke wrote:
> Alex Knauth wrote on 10/14/2015 05:57 PM:
> 
> >
> > It's not worth changing the default for all of racket just to avoid 
> > putting #lang colon-kw racket at the top of a program.
> >
> 
> I currently have the opposite opinion on that point.
> 
> Partly because, before I would use `#lang colon-kw racket/base` at the 
> top of each of my modules, I would use `#lang paddle/base`. Then the 
> effective forking of the language is perhaps more apparent, even though 
> the actual texts below the respective differing `#lang` lines would be 
> identical in both cases.  Because I really-really don't want to 
> effectively fork the Racket dialect in which people write snippets on 
> email lists and such, that's why I'm investing in the energy-intensive 
> town hall dialogue that's usually involved in making any programming 
> language change when it's not simply done by fiat and announced as a 
> done deal. :)
> 
> Neil V.

It's not "forking the language", it's turning into an opt-in library. The huge 
difference between the colon-kw language mixin and that paddle/base language is 
that the form isn't a language. It can be provided to any language. If your 
paddle/base language didn't provide colon keywords, you could just as easily 
get them with #lang colon-kw paddle/base. You're not forking anything, you're 
simply using a library.

I find the idea of breaking existing code for such a simple stylistic matter 
that you can fix with nine extra characters at the top of your file somewhat 
absurd. This isn't fixing some troublesome misfeature, or adding an important 
new base language feature, or correcting buggy behavior, it's tweaking a 
completely superficial minor behavior for aesthetic benefit that's quite 
opinion-driven and not at all a benefit for even a majority of Racket 
programmers. That's the kind of thing that belongs precisely in an opt-in 
library, not in a breaking change of the core language.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Alexis King]

> It's not "forking the language", it's turning into an opt-in library. The 
> huge difference between the colon-kw language mixin and that paddle/base 
> language is that the form isn't a language. It can be provided to any 
> language. If your paddle/base language didn't provide colon keywords, you 
> could just as easily get them with #lang colon-kw paddle/base. You're not 
> forking anything, you're simply using a library.

I can’t wait until all of my programs look like this at the top:

#lang at-exp colon-kw curly-fn debug exact-decimal postfix-dot-notation 
sweet-exp racket/base

Okay, so that is perhaps a straw man, but I think the point still stands. I am 
a strong supporter of meta-languages, but I am a stronger supporter of 
standardization. I remain ambivalent about this particular issue—I think there 
are good arguments on both sides—but consider this to be me playing devil’s 
advocate.

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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Robby Findler]

I love this message. Highlight of my day. :)

On Wednesday, October 14, 2015, Neil Van Dyke  wrote:

> We are conducting a highly scientific poll.
>
> The question we want to answer is whether people would like for the Racket
> standard languages to have symbols that begin with the colon character
> (except for the symbol `:`) to read the same has keywords that begin with
> pound-colon.
>
> That is, when this glorious colon-keywords support is added, instead of
> having to type and look at:
>
> (foo #:abc 1 #:xyx 42)
>
> you can choose to bask in the beauty of:
>
> (foo :abc 1 :xyx 42)
>
> Then you would be free to use the gorgeous colon-keywords everywhere in
> Racket, including in quick one-line examples in email list posts.
>
> All people of great aesthetic sense, intellect, and good moral fiber, who
> would naturally like everyone to have the right to use either
> colon-keywords or (eww) pound-colon keywords (in unity, and without
> unnecessary `#lang` schisms!), should answer the quick poll:
>
> http://goo.gl/forms/Kwl3uZVMsb
>
> (When the poll question asks "Is it worth changing?", read it is as "You
> are a good person, and you naturally think Racket should support both
> colon-keywords and pound-colon keywords, right?")
>
> I call upon all freedom-loving Racketeers to stand up and fight for the
> righteous cause of colon-keywords.  The moment to answer this highly
> scientific poll is now.
>
> Neil V.
>
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Re: [racket-users] racket users fight for their right to colon keywords

[Benjamin Greenman]

On Wed, Oct 14, 2015 at 11:01 PM, Alexis King  wrote:

> I can’t wait until all of my programs look like this at the top:


Haskellers are living the dream. For example:
https://github.com/ekmett/lens/blob/master/src/Control/Lens/Tuple.hs

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