Re: Data structure design again

2013/12/11 Jan Wielemaker <[email protected]>

> 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.


Jan, that's great !

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
>
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