I second this proposal. Somewhere in the tutorial (or in the announcement?) Paul quoted that "Code should be written for people to read". When you write pseudo code, you don't litter your code with parentheses. Just as when you write math, you use infix where possible.
I realize that having no separation between data and code representation is really neat when you do macros and other types of meta programming, but I think we can have our cake and eat it too. What I am aiming for here is a language that looks like, say, Python (no need to get religious here, but Python is damn easy to read and you know it), but with an optional "strict" LISP syntax, that I can use when I need it.
It seems to me that all we need is a simple preprocessor that converts "code style" to "data style" representation.
I like scheme a lot; and the parentheses never bothered me. But one device which could provide a gradual path through the thicket of parentheses, and perhaps make Arc more inviting to beginners, would be the:
hide/show invisibles
of word processors. There could even be levels:
hide/show some invisibles
hide/show more invisibles
hide/show all invisibles
Yeah, personally I don't really care whether this is even a language feature or an editor feature. The ability to hide/show more or fewer is certainly interesting.
