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LISP and parentheses

I'm just now learning Lisp. It is really sort of fun, but I am thinking that the parentheses issue is probably going to end up being the thing that keeps biting me on the butt. It seems to me that they really shouldn't be much different than managing braces in C, say. Indenting helps. But even if I try to keep that all in order, I get fouled up when I revise or insert code, and waste a lot of time checking the parens and looking for their matches and whatnot.

Has anyone some suggestions on how to approach this issue with Lisp? A good IDE that looks after us poor devils, for example? Or some good habits to get into?

Budsy

By Budsy at 2010-02-02 18:03 | LtU Forum | previous forum topic | next forum topic | other blogs | 4925 reads

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:-)

some possibly useful hints.

By raould at Tue, 2010-02-02 18:39 | login or register to post comments

Better

EmacsWiki: Category Parentheses

Also, learn SLIME. Actually, the author of SLIME is a LtU contributing editor...

Also, if you want to use SLIME/SWANK with Clojure, have a look at something like Clojure with Emacs and Slime/Swank on Ubuntu.

Edit:

Here are some others, since I got interested I figured I'd build a list.

IDEs for Clojure

Edit #2: the Libraries link off the Clojure home page is out of date. Clojure community members: If you care about your language, be good stewards with your home page and stomp out incorrect links. -- I am not a Clojure developer at the moment so I could care less.

By Z-Bo at Tue, 2010-02-02 18:53 | login or register to post comments

If you switch to Scheme

If you switch to Scheme (think of it as a clean subset), Dr. Scheme (for PLT Scheme) is one of the best environments, coming with a huge set of integrated tools (macro debugging, scriptable debugging, voice input, syntax highlighting, code coloring, yada yada).

By lmeyerov at Tue, 2010-02-02 19:08 | login or register to post comments

Emacs + Paredit package

If you'll use Emacs, I highly recommend great paredit package, that keep parentheses and quotes matching, etc.

By alexott at Tue, 2010-02-02 19:11 | login or register to post comments