Re: Shootout Stuff

[Eli Barzilay <eli@barzilay.org>]

On Apr  8, David N. Welton wrote:
> MJ Ray <markj@cloaked.freeserve.co.uk> writes:
> 
> > David N. Welton <davidw@dedasys.com> wrote:
> > > ((((
> > >   ((
> > 
> > That doesn't happen in reality.  You normally get something like:
> 
> well, not that bad, but it does happen some.

I don't want to get into redundant flames, but I think that the PLT
collects directory is big enough to run statistics on.  So I searched
for lines that begin with a bunch of open parens -- there are:

* 2618 lines that begin with a double open paren (0.6%)
* 27 lines that begin with a triple open paren (0.006%)
* 0 lines that begin with a quadruple open paren (0%)

But even these are usually simple since you have a very short
expression, something like:

  ((foo ...)
   ...)

so I counted lines that start with two or more parens and do not have
a following closing paren and there are 29 of these (0.0065%).

Out of a total of 441426 lines, I think that the statement that "That
doesn't happen in reality" is very reasonable.


> My point was more with regards visual aesthetics and the 'look' of a
> scheme program (hint - squint your eyes and stare at it).

I swear I've squinted and I've squinted -- for a full minute and saw
nothing but my program -- and I'm serious -- I squinted so I could not
read the characters, but the structure of let's named let's, if's, and
define's was *very* clear (and colorful on my Emacs setup).

(At some point I though that I saw a 3D picture of a big lambda symbol
rotating wildly...)

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