2 comments

  • sudahtigabulan 1 hour ago
    > Note that programs were usually typed on as few lines as possible, because they had to be punched to punched cards or typed in at a teletype which echoed its input on paper.

    I suspect this is the real reason behind "cram all the closing parentheses together on the same line" rule.

    The only rationale I've seen online is in Taylor Campbell's style guide:

    > Absolutely do not place closing brackets on their own lines.

    > ...

    > Rationale: The parentheses grow lonely if their closing brackets are all kept separated and segregated.

    Yeah, right.

    Anybody know anything about how this rule came to be?

    • weknowbetter 45 minutes ago
      This drives me nuts. I love LISP but refuse to pretend writing `)))))))` is reasonable.
      • uncletaco 33 minutes ago
        Whya are you writing ')))))' instead of your closing parenthesis being autogenerated. Sounds like a recipe for failure.
      • greenbit 30 minutes ago
        ))))))) isn't so bad, but )))))))) is just getting ridiculous. You have to draw the line somewhere
      • isr 5 minutes ago
        picolisp has an interesting solution to this. A single ']' will close all open )'s for that block of code
    • hujun236 16 minutes ago
      [flagged]
    • andsoitis 47 minutes ago
      [flagged]
  • tomhow 2 hours ago
    Previously...

    LISPy things you can do in 64K bytes of core (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44490099 - July 2025 (4 comments)