Re: Improving aesthetics & readability of backquote

[Michael Heerdegen]

"Paul W. Rankin" <address@hidden> writes:

> Me:     As a comparatively new user, I remember when learning Emacs
>         I found this part ugly and confusing. Here is a suggestion
>         from such a perspective on how it could be improved.

Most people participating here have learned Lisp long time ago, so they
probably don't remember how it was.

I'm quite sure that ` and , are indeed ugly, make Lisp more complicated
and harder to learn.  But they have a huge advantage that more than
outweighs all of that: they make complex list constructions much better
readable.  But only after one got used to them.  Once you did get used
to this syntax, it's invaluable.

My personal opinion is that learners need to get used to it.  I'm not
convinced allowing a different simpler syntax would be beneficial: it
would complicate things and maybe keep newbies from learning a lesson
they would need to learn anyway.


Michael.