Re: learning Emacs Lisp

[Richard Riley]

Andreas Politz <politza@fh-trier.de> writes:

> Richard Riley wrote:
>> Tassilo Horn <tassilo@member.fsf.org> writes:
>>
>>> Richard Riley <rileyrgdev@gmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>> Hi Richard,
>>>
>>>> [...] but Xah Lee is an excellent resource with carefully argued
>>>> points and practical approach to, amongst other things, eLisp usage.
>>> This is a joke, isn't it?
>>
>> Not in the slightest. I can only assume the bit you snipped about some
>> more established Emacs users disagreeing with him applies to you? Or the
>> tone suggests that.
>>
>>> When learning a language it's better to take a look at polished code
>>> that uses this language's idioms.  Xah's on a crusade against even the
>>> most basic stuff like correct indentation...
>>
>> By correct indentation I guess you mean the established custom? I cant
>> disagree that customs are good but personally I think the established
>> custom in elisp is rather awkward to the extreme. Not that i dont try to
>> adhere to it :-; But even looking around the C world we see various
>> indentation standards and everyone is entitled to their view. A constant
>> style is, of course, better for everyone although it does not
>> immediately mean that constant style is the best. As a programmer for
>> years I can not even begin to understand how and why eLisp bracketing
>> standards became as they did other than maybe to save screen real estate
>> in the VT100 type days. FWIW, I think saving space is better for the eye
>> too in some ways but I find "at a glance" analysis of most eLisp code
>> almost impossible because of the standard of grouping all closing
>> brackets.
>>
>
> That darn old emacs again ! Seriously this has more to do with lisp in
> general than specifically with elisp. I doubt you'd find any _one_ serious
> programmer or author in the whole lisp community who proposes this kind of
> style ( each closing paren on a seperate line ).

You will notice that I did not propose it. I said the standard is hard
for me to read as someone who is not an eLisp magician. I still do not
understand (other than the reasons I postulated about above) why it is
as it is. I find it very hard to indent and match (ok, emacs helps with
matching brackets), but would find it very difficult to read from a
printout for example. But this is more my lack of experience
possibly. All hindrances can become less so with experience. But would
aligned brackets really hurt anyone? I dont think so. It is convention
(and convention is a good thing at times) which has the style as it
is. Or?