LIlispm·Feb 2, 2023
> M-expressions ("never implemented")
There were a bunch of approaches and even implemented languages.
https://github.com/shaunlebron/history-of-lisp-parens/blob/m...
In History of Lisp Parentheses (2019)shaunlebron
history-of-lisp-parens
Languages & Compilers2017–2023
shaunlebron / history-of-lisp-parens
history-of-lisp-parens
a history of Lisp's most notorious artifact, parentheses
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7 sourcesHistory of Lisp Parentheses (2019)
80 points · Open discussionYou might find this repo interesting: https://github.com/shaunlebron/history-of-lisp-parens
In Clojure is coolI think that's a poor reason to choose a concrete syntax, and if it really bothers you it's easy enough to have your machine display them however you want.
For example, I use https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DimParentheses to make parentheses unobtrusive. I sometimes want to see them if they're at my cursor position, so I use https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ShowParenMode to highlight that one and its corresponding opener/closer. I use https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/ParEdit to automatically keep parens/quotes/etc. balanced, move around whole subexpressions, etc. I'm sure there are similar tools for different editors (e.g. there's an incomplete list at https://github.com/shaunlebron/history-of-lisp-parens/blob/m... )
There's a screenshot of this setup at http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2017-08-29-s_expressions.html
In The rise and rise of JSON (2017)