Re: Shootout Stuff

[davidw@dedasys.com (David N. Welton)]

MJ Ray <markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> writes:

> MichaelL@frogware.com <MichaelL@frogware.com> wrote:
> > Having said that, Scheme has one down side: Scheme programs are
> > harder to read. Other languages give you much better visual cues
> > about the structure of the program; in Scheme you have to really
> > work to see it.
 
> Is this really true?  scmindent can give you some good visual cues
> on most scheme programs (and my programs get piped through it many
> times).  It says something about the normal readability that I can't
> find the obfuscated scheme contest, although I thought it was at
> HUT.fi ;-)

I think that visually, parentheses tend to not line up vertically very
well.

[[[[
  [[

Makes a nice, square block, that the eye can sort out relatively
easily, compared to:

((((
  ((

I think that this is because the parentheses tends to pull the eye
diagonally, and doesn't have any square edges.  Add that to the fact
that scheme coders tend to group lots of them together, and use less
indendation that C code (4 or 8 lines are pretty common), and you have
something that is visually less clear - at least in my opinion, and
going off a few things I remember from art classes.

Of course, the *content* is usually quite readable at a conceptual
level.

-- 
David N. Welton
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