Re: handling parenthesis and quotes

[Harald Hanche-Olsen]

+ Adam <nospam@example.com>:

| A related newbie question might be, is this the 
| usual approach for 'incremental programming' by 
| Lisp users ?  That is; write a function, 
| then append that function to a file of work 
| with append-to-file ?  

I don't know what most people do.  Incremental programming is more
about ways to build a program than about particular editing habits, I
think.

It is all about building your application bit by bit, testing as you
go, and basing your work on what went before - and occassionally going
back and redoing things when you discover that design mistakes become
a hindrance to further work.  How people save and organize their work
is probably highly individual, but appending new functions willy-nilly
to a file seems too disorganized for my taste.  Rather, I work on the
program files themselves, trying to keep related functions
together. And whenever I have written a new function or rewritten an
old one, I evaluate the defun directly from the buffer (using C-M-x).
Then I use the interaction buffer mainly to test my work.
The same method works for Common Lisp using slime.  And since slime
has facilities for making this style of work easy, I suspect something
like it is a popular method.  8-)

-- 
* Harald Hanche-Olsen     <URL:http://www.math.ntnu.no/~hanche/>
- It is undesirable to believe a proposition
  when there is no ground whatsoever for supposing it is true.
  -- Bertrand Russell