Re: [PATCH v3] docs/match: pattern matcher example makeover

[Arun Isaac <arunisaac@systemreboot.net>]

Hi Blake,

> Well, these conventions can be found throughout the gamut of scheme
> literature going back to the 80s, and some of the largest scheme
> projects, such as Chez, Racket, etc. employ them. So if you're
> getting into Scheme, you'll necessarily encounter them, and if you
> haven't been made aware that brackets are syntactic sugar for parens
> in Scheme, or if that doesn't become apparent with some quick repl
> experimentation, you've probably jumped into pattern matching a bit
> too quickly.  
>
> But overall, it seems the objections against the Indiana style here
> are primarily concerned with individual, current user/contributor
> preferences, rather than out of a concern for the target audience,
> which are newcomers.

I don't think I agree. When I was a newcomer to guile and was reading
the sxml-match documentation in the manual for the first time, I found
it very confusing that there were square brackets. At that point, I
understood match but was confounded into thinking that sxml-match was
completely different due to the square brackets. Finally, when I
understood, I contributed a patch making everything round
parentheses. https://issues.guix.gnu.org/30920

I'd say a typical newcomer is not familiar with the gamut of scheme
literature going back to the 80s. I certainly wasn't, and still am not
to be honest.

Cheers!
Arun