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RE: LFM + LFSP = LFE?

> > True of Ruby, too. Instead of:
> > (map (lambda (n) (* n 2)) '(0 1 2 3 4))
> > You write:
> > [0,1,2,3,4].map{|n| n*2}
> 
> Great!  Now people afraid of "()'" can use "[],.{}|" instead!

On a similar topic, I've been shocked to see the proliferation of a weird group of XML-syntax-based languages.  It astounds me that anyone thinks these examples are a good idea:

Example 1:  Superx++ (http://xplusplus.sourceforge.net)
=======================================================
Display the text "Hello, World!"

Superx++:   <xpp>
               <xout>Hello World!</xout>
            </xpp>

Scheme:     (display "Hello World!")
Perl:       print "Hello, World!";
Smalltalk:  'Hello, world' printNl !

Example 2:  Water (http://www.waterlang.org)
=============================================
Compute and display the value of (5 + 7)/3

Water:      5.<plus 7/>.<divide 3/>
Scheme:     (/ (+ 5 7) 3)
Perl:       print (5 + 7) / 3;
Smalltalk:  ((5 + 7) / 3) printNl !

In general, I find the whole XML thing to seem like a really wasteful way of defining documents.  I've been ruined by Jim Bender's wonderful WebIt! framework for scheme.  Using it, instead of writing HTML documents like so:

<html>
  <head>
	Blah Blah
      <title> Blah </title>
   <head>
   <body>
 	Oh, the humanity.
   </body>
</html>

I can do fun stuff like:

(h4:html
  (h4:head (h4:title "Blah"))
  (h4:body
     "Oh, the humanity."))
     
Try it -- your fingers will thank you.  :-)

And I would submit that with the advent of Oleg Kiselyov's SXPATH,SXML,etc. (see 
http://okmij.org/ftp/Scheme/xml.html) that writing any plain-text XML is just too painful for mere humans to bear.

-Brent

-Brent