> 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?
> 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?
Heh, I remember that and personally answering no when he complained about my paren formatting. I miss that channel.
This drives me nuts. I love LISP but refuse to pretend writing `)))))))` is reasonable.
Why are you writing ')))))' instead of your closing parenthesis being autogenerated. Sounds like a recipe for failure.
))))))) isn't so bad, but )))))))) is just getting ridiculous. You have to draw the line somewhere
picolisp has an interesting solution to this. A single ']' will close all open )'s for that block of code
That has to be a nightmare for parsers lol
This is somewhat confusing as there is a fairly well known toy Lisp interpreter called Lispy written by Peter Norvig
https://www.norvig.com/lispy.html
Previously...
LISPy things you can do in 64K bytes of core (2019) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44490099 - July 2025 (4 comments)