Re: rough first impressions

[Michael Vanier <mvanier@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 12:12:24 -0400
> From: Jonathan Bachrach <jrb@ai.mit.edu>
> 
> miles,
> 
> On Sunday, April 13, 2003, at 12:37 PM, Miles Egan wrote:
> 
> > (Coming from the perspective of someone that's been a daytime
> > perl/python/ruby person and nightime lisp/ocaml person for the last
> > several years.)
> >
> > LIKES:
> > * terseness vs common lisp
> > Code compactness contributes to readability, at least to a point.  I
> > think goo strikes a good balance here although the d? keywords are a
> > little bit hard to distinguish.
> 
> yeah i've thought about at least adding synonyms such as defclass.  a 
> lot of people grumble at the beginning but then seem to like the 
> terseness and the saved columns.

Please do add the synonyms! I found the "dc", "dm" stuff to be the single
most off-putting aspect of goo.  I'm fine if other people want to use them
but I'd like a more verbose form.  Heck, I probably would have called it
"define-class" ;-)

> 
> actually what i was thinking was changing goo over to using case 
> sensitivity and having all caps be the convention for types.  this 
> saves characters and is pretty standard and lets you name the 
> constructors by lowercasing the type name.  lots of lispers object to 
> case sensitivity and using the shift key (except to type parentheses).
> 

It seems reasonable to have a different namespace for types.  I think
all-caps is PRETTY HEAVY THOUGH.  What about having the first letter
capitalized?  Many languages (prolog, ocaml, haskell) use this convention
for various purposes.

> 
> > Anyway, I think it's a pretty intruiging package.  How serious are you
> > all about developing this thing?  Is it primarily a research vehicle or
> > do you really intend to take on Python?
> 
> i'm not planning on taking on python.  i'm interested in a number of 
> research directions and application areas.  i've got a pretty good base 
> and now plan to push it.  i will continue to make it available and 
> respond to suggestions but i don't have world domination in mind.
> 
> jonathan
> 

Concentrate on building a great system, and world domination will take care
of itself ;-)  If you build it, we will come.

Parenthetically (pun intended), it's nice to see new languages adopting
s-expression based syntax.  Hopefully this will encourage more people to
appreciate the virtues of this syntax.

Mike