parentheses matching is a surprisingly non-trivial problem. (i.e. simple counting of opening and closing parens isn't sufficient, given that quoted parens shouldn't be counted) For humans, ignoring quoted parens is maybe easier, but i would say it's a flex to assert that you can tell if (3,(g(f('('),x))) is balanced at a glance.
even if you can, surely you're wasting time and/or focus on an automatable task.
But we all have something we do 'the hard way' because it feels like more effort to relearn the task than its worth, or because we tried the easy way once and were put off by some side-effect.
paren highlighting never comes as a single unit, its always packaged with other 'helpful' tools, some subset of which will always be infuriating to someone.
> For humans, ignoring quoted parens is maybe easier, but i would say it's a flex to assert that you can tell if (3,(g(f('('),x))) is balanced at a glance.
True, but mentally balancing parentheses is usually something that you do while writing the code: you pushpop a little stack in your head and this becomes second nature.
Mentally verifying if parentheses are balanced while reading code is hardly ever required. You can usually safely assume that they are (unless that darn compiler tells you otherwise).
you're probably right, difficulties when writing are mainly due to tools 'helpfully' adding a ket as soon as i type a bra.
maybe i just dont have that stack well enough built in my head--if im editing in a plugin-free vim, i do find i have to backtrack and count to make sure i've put the right number of kets at the end of a nested expression.
if i used s-expressiony instead of tab-heavy languages more often i'm sure i'd be better at it.
even if you can, surely you're wasting time and/or focus on an automatable task.
But we all have something we do 'the hard way' because it feels like more effort to relearn the task than its worth, or because we tried the easy way once and were put off by some side-effect.
paren highlighting never comes as a single unit, its always packaged with other 'helpful' tools, some subset of which will always be infuriating to someone.