> there are languages with a relatively small number of distinct syllables, like Japanese

Japanese has around 50 syllabic symbols, depending on how you count - include both sets of kana? include more archaic kana? etc

What would be a more typical number of syllabic symbols? I tried googling it to get an idea, but couldn't find much useful information. I guess Arabic has 28?

I think they meant syllables specifically, not syllabic symbols. Meanings syllabic symbols might get confused for an alphabet if the language has a sufficiently small set of syllables. See https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/a/36909

Yeah, was aware of that possibility; I guess I should have made a point about the disctinction between symbols vs "possible sound combinations" (my words). And even "possible sound combinations" can be further limited to "actually used sound combinations" as mentioned in the answer on that SO link.

So, in terms of "possible sound combinations" I think Japanese would likely be on the lower side given that the number of sounds are also pretty low. Alright, thank you for that reply; the point in the original post I replied to makes more sense to me now.

Not sure it counts as "multicursors" but overwriting a rectangle using C-x r t (string-rectangle) is pretty handy in emacs.

With built-in emacs functionality you can do:

1. Place the cursor on the left parenthesis of the form (same as you wrote)

2. C-M-Space to select the form.

3. M-( to surrond with parenthesis.

4. type "if flag" (same as you wrote for #3)

One extra step, but no need for a plugin.

Also, I added a simple "insert-quotes" that I think I mostly copy-pasted from the built-in "insert-parentheses":

  (defun insert-quotes (&optional arg)
    (interactive "P")
    (insert-pair arg ?\" ?\"))

So I can replace my #3 above to wrap something with quotes instead of parentheses.

> So I can replace my #3 above to wrap something with quotes instead of parentheses.

That's M-" .

Interesting, I did not know that! But, the one I wrote mimics how insert-parentheses works, so I will probably stick to my version.

> Creating a language designed for being manipulated this way

AFAIK, Lisp wasn't created for structural editing, it was just a "happy accident" that it lends itself so well to the technique. Even without the paredit and parinfer plugins, emacs already has good support for structural editing built-in. It reminds me of VIM text objects, but geared directly for Lisp syntax, ie. symbolic expressions.

> a couple of famous Haskell folks.

Who?

> adding support for light/dark mode

It's there.

  M-x invert-face

Then, type "default"

Also, checkout M-x customize-themes for some other decent built-in themes.

A garbage reddit post produces this great comment - only on HN! :)

And somehow, my reply managed to avoid using that letter ...

I think it's meant to be a sarcastic take of the next iteration after VS Code :)

> the worse is better approach is better.

I think this ties back to the idea of "get it working, then once it's working go back and make it fast | preformant | better for whatever meaning of better".

I think much of the consternation towards "worse is better" comes from re-inventing things to achieve the "make it better" improvements from scratch instead of leveraging existing knowledge. Re-inventing might be fine, but we shouldn't throw away knowledge and establshed techniques if we can avoid it.

That may be one failure mode, but another one is more prominent: Half-assing the next feature is more interesting than going back and making the last feature that you half-implemented actually work. That goes for both commercial and open-source software.

To me, the form is not intuitive, but the result is:

  ((1 2) 3 4)

Someone else in that thread mentioned that CONS is basically adding (1 2) to the front of the (3 4) list, and that helped me understand it better.