Re: swiss army knife

Anton van Straaten <anton@appsolutions.com> writes:

> Joe Marshall wrote: 
>
> Here lies the ultimate solution: Scheme code should be authored in a
> specially-designed SGML dialect.  We can use HTML to prototype this to
> get a feel for the many advantages of the approach, e.g.:
>
> (define <i>IncBeta</i> (λ (β) (+ β 1)))
> (<i>IncBeta</i> 41) ;=> 42
>
> As an additional benefit, this syntax may be more attractive to
> e.g. Perl programmers.  It's hard to see a downside here!

It still has those damnable smooth parenthesis.  I suggest replacing
the ones that do not surround function calls with curly braces:

{define <i>IncBeta</i> {λ {β} (+ β 1)}}
(<i>IncBeta</i> 41) ;=> 42

and possibly moving the function position to just before the parens
and adding a sprinkling of gratuitous other punctuation.

{define <i>IncBeta</i> {λ {β} + (β, 1);}}
<i>IncBeta</i> (41) ;=> 42

There we go.  Isn't that *much* more readable?  I bet it runs a lot
faster, now, too.