Simplifying and unifying syntax

[Fabio Krapohl]

In the thread on google you thought it would be more uniform if linkage was not written inside the declaration of definitions.
(def x (… linkage …)) could be written as (def x linkage (… …))
then anonymous functions would look more similar to function declarations.
What about this change?

Some other idea I had is adding macros, which expand to def forms (for example defn, def-macro, def-struct and def-var) to be more uniform with other macro-def-forms (like def-enum, def-variant, def-concept, def-concept-macro, etc.).
(it would also make sence to drop the def-forms entirely maybe)
Using def- forms has some benefits: no unneccessary brackets, writing macros, which work for multiple def-forms, is easier, you see immideately, what is defined. friendlier to lispers.
maybe also all macro-def-froms should take a linkage (like def-concept and def-recursive-macro but in these cases, it probably won't be useful, not to be extern)

[tomhrr]

After thinking about this some more, the current syntax will remain as-is, for two reasons.

• Moving linkage specification to the top form implies that all defs have the same acceptable set of linkage values, but that is not the case.
• Switching to defn etc. will lessen consistency between the named and anonymous forms for both functions and structs. E.g., either there will be defn for named functions while fn continues to be used for anonymous functions, or defn will be used in both cases but be even more different than the two current fn forms. While that doesn't of itself mean that macros and variables couldn't be converted to def-macro and def-var, there is the potential in both of those cases for anonymous forms to be implemented, so going to the trouble doesn't appear to be worthwhile.