Re: Data structure design again

On 12/11/2013 05:52 AM, Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:
> Someone is bound to freak out at the idea of representing

+1

> [:x | x + 1] as block(lambda([x],[],call(+,[var(x),integer(1)])))
> but I've tried it without the outer discriminator and it makes
> writing the code so error prone it's not worth it.  In any case,

Languages are in my opinion always a compromise between the human and
the machine. Humans like something concise and intuitive. Machines like
something precise and explicit. Saying "1" (without the quotes) is for a
human enough to specify we are talking about an integer. Having to write
"integer(1)" is a lot of work as well as hard to read as you have to
process all this text and brackets.  It also makes it hard to give a
good layout to larger structures.

Well, we already knew we disagree on these things when discussing mark
down ... All I want to achieve is to reduce the number of cases where we
_force_ people to use this verbose syntax to define their data or DSL
representation. Anyone is still free to do so and often it is a good
idea.

> the *proportional* overhead is slight.

For atomic data about a factor 3. The leafs often atomic and that is
where most of the space goes. Whether or not that is `slight' depends
completely on the application. Often it is. Sometimes it is not.

	Cheers --- Jan