RE: position on changing defaults?

[Drew Adams]

>   > FWIW, I see no need to change any defaults in this 
>   > regard. Someone who programs in Lisp (where paren matching
>   > is important) will have no trouble finding and customizing
>   > these things.
> 
> Huh?  AFAIR many languages other than lisp use parens quite a bit... 

"Huh?"  (What is that, the latest way to put people down? HUH? Whaddaya,
stupid? Nuts? HUH? ;-))

Dan, I don't care whether you change the default or not. As I said, I use
show-parent-mode, personally. I see no need to change the default, but I
don't care if you do change it. Fiddle away.

But yes, paren matching is more important to Lisp than to most other
languages. And yes, paren matching can also be important to other languages,
besides Lisp.

There is nevertheless a qualitative difference between Lisp and most other
languages in this regard, in particular because its data and program
syntaxes are the same (and use parens).

Try editing Lisp code without automatic indenting or paren matching. It's no
accident that those features were developed first for Lisp. It's a nightmare
to edit Lisp without some such aids. The same is not true to the same degree
for most other languages. 

I programmed in Fortran for years without paren matching, and I never would
have dreamed that such a feature could be important to coding. If you had
proposed to me back then that Fortran code have its matching parens
highlighted I would have said, "Huh?".