Explicitly, in lisp, everything is a stack of instructions arranged in a tree. The instructions are either functions that manipulate the input data, or functions that manipulate the underlying tree of instructions.
By naming convention and documentation, we give the various functions semantics. ("With" macros being an example).
I was just refuting the assertion that "S-expressions are about as semantically sane as you can get".
> Explicitly, in lisp, everything is a stack of instructions arranged in a tree.
I do not particularly care what data structure is internally used. That is the compiler's business, not mine. I want to reason about my code in terms of the semantics of the language I am using.
> By naming convention and documentation, we give the various functions semantics. ("With" macros being an example).
Names may be misleading, documentation may be incomplete, but types never fail to accurately guarantee properties about my code. Hence my preference for types.
His comment was equally nonsensical. S-expressions are consistent and easy to parse, that is all.
> I do not particularly care what data structure is internally used. That is the compiler's business, not mine. I want to reason about my code in terms of the semantics of the language I am using.
>I do not particularly care what data structure is internally used. That is the compiler's business, not mine. I want to reason about my code in terms of the semantics of the language I am using.
Good, that data structure generally isn't used internally in the compiler (not efficient enough). I'm talking about the data structure that is used for the programmer's brain. The semantics and way of reasoning about the code is in terms of a very simple data-structure.
My business is the compiler's business.
> Names may be misleading, documentation may be incomplete, but types never fail to accurately guarantee properties about my code. Hence my preference for types.
Why would you write such shitty code? There are many ways of skinning that cat. You can use types, you can use tests, you can use assertions.
You could make it overly complicated and long. A stupid person is going to have a bad time writing code, no matter what language you hand them. Shitty code is shitty. This is a tautology comparing the language I'm currently into to a language I'm not currently into. Don't use it. You're good at writing Haskell, good for you.
def add(x, y):
return x + y
(define (add x y)
(+ x y))
Another example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorless_green_ideas_sleep_fu.... That sentence is semantically meaningless, but it has the correct syntax.
edit: fixed code formatting.
One of them.
> The best Haskell book I can find is next for me as soon as I finish SICP, any suggestions?
I liked Learn You a Haskell for Great Good, but that is maybe just because I am a childish person. :-)
Both are available online for free!
You are talking about syntax here.
> Ruby is not semantically sane, it's insane in a way we have all gotten used to.
I hate Ruby even more. It is just as semantically insane as Lisp, and the syntax is worse.
> (If you don't know ruby, try to rewrite this for your ALGO language of choice, I picked ruby for its simplicity)
Ruby is not simple. It is full of corner cases and redundant constructs. It is hard to make any sort of reasonable guarantee about a Ruby program without resorting to some heavy testing. And no matter what nice property you might have wrestled out of the system, someone else can destroy it anyway by means of monkey patching.
> S-expressions are about as semantically sane as you can get
S-expressions are syntax with no intrinsic semantics.
> it's just most of us have a <5 year head start with the craziness of c-style languages.
What about Haskell? (And, in general, languages that have a denotational semantics that makes equational reasoning feasible.)
For more details, see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6954348