It is interesting to have a look at how you make decisions in different programming languages. In Python, for example, the code is straightforward.
>>> if 1 < 2:
… print ‘smaller’
… else:
… print ‘bigger’
…
smaller
>>>
Maybe I’m wrong but I think that you don’t need programming experience to have an idea what is going on here. Let’s have a look at the same decision in Lisp.
CL-USER> (if (< 1 2) ‘smaller ‘bigger)
SMALLER
CL-USER>
I’m not sure if everybody can immediately tell how it works. The code is very concise and clear. But it doesn’t help in this case. I don’t think the parentheses are the problem. Maybe it is because the ‘else’ is missing and you need the additional information about how else is handled here.
On the other hand, if the code is more descriptive, it can be a problem too. Let’s have a look at our decision in Squeak Smalltalk.
b := (1 < 2) ifTrue: [‘smaller’] ifFalse: [‘bigger’].
Transcript show: b; cr.
Maybe it is because of the message chaining that I need a bit more time to fully understand the code snippet. Or maybe I just did too much programming in C-style languages.