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From: Daniel Barlow <d...@telent.net>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: LISP - 24hours in a few days - headache
Date: Sat, 17 Aug 2002 21:58:23 +0100
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il...@lazaridis.de writes:

> as in other newgroups: no precision, no gentleness, no focussing on the
                         ^^^^^^^^^^^^
> posters problems & questions. Many throw out all their psychological
> garbage (auto-collected).


> Some incosistencies in function naming, some in writing style, "calling
> conventions".

Bits of the language are over 40 years old.  Of course it will be
inconsistent in places.

> it hurts, eh? ok, could agree to this?
>
> ( let ((result 1)) (
>       dotimes (n 10 result) (
>         setq result (+ result n)
>       )
>     )
> )

Please, if you're asking for precision from the other newsgroup
contributors, it would be helpful if you would employ more of it
yourself.  I realise that English may not be your first language, but
when you say "could agree to this", it's impossible to tell whether
you mean that _you_ could agree to that (for example, as an
intermediate position while adjusting from C style indentation) or
you're asking whether _we_ could agree to that.  Don't omit words if
you're unsure whether they can safely be inferred from context.

I'm going to assume you mean the latter, though, and the answer is
"no".  There is a convention for Lisp indentation and paren style, and
there is a bast amount of Lisp code written using it.  Even aside from
any aesthetic arguments for one form or the other, if you become an
adept Lisp programmer you will spend far more time reading code
written by other people than you will writing code, so you may as well
get used to the standard layout.  

How do we cope?  We've learnt not to worry about it.  Our editors
balance the parens for us - we trust that works correctly and don't
need the reassurance of confirming it by eye.  When we read code, we
look at the indentation.  When we write code, we hit the TAB key and
add/remove parens until the indentation is correct.  Some people even
customize their editor to display them in a less obtrusive colour.

Just don't /worry/ about them.


-dan

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