Hacker News Reader

> Are square brackets part of the spec now? I can't get over ((((( for everything with no real easily visible distinguishability between parts of a definition. Clojure gets the Lisp-like syntax as right as possible IMO.

Square brackets are replaced by normal parenthesis to my knowledge.

Though I have to admit that I strongly dislike them. They put more cognitive effort into the syntax than they aid.

View on HN

For me the cognitive effort is greater without the use of []. The meaning of the () following a symbol in a (define) is only determined by it's position. With [] you can, at a glance, know the role of that list. It gives some visual separation to the parts of a function definition that most other languages just have automatically.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com