>> Is it possible to use this technique to introduce, say, infix arithmetic operators, or ObjC's dot syntax? Yes and no. The fact that the language is a list (

>> Is it possible to use this technique to introduce, say, infix arithmetic operators, or ObjC's dot syntax? Yes and no. The fact that the language is a list (which is the same data structure that you use to manipulate value) is what makes it that powerful. Once you start adding more syntax, then it's not a list anymore.. so you can't just pass that code to your macro and it becomes trickier. For instance, you could receive your AST, manipulate and return it, but now you're getting into implementation detail about how the lexer and parser are working. Compare that with lisp where you get a list and you return a list. The fact that your code is your AST is that makes it so magical. I understand that the lisp syntax can throw someone off guard when they're used to seeing obj-c or javascript. But honestly, it's much simpler and easier to get to than, say, get familiar with C++ if you're a java programmer. One problem that I see with Lisp is that since everything looks the same, it's hard to quickly parse it when reading a file. I feel like reading a Python file is really fast because it's separated in classes / method, or even the methods are clearly separated in "paragraph". While in lisp, everything has the same syntax and to know what's happening you need to read almost every line. Basically, I feel like it's lacking visual clue. Clojure fixes that a little bit by adding a few more data structure. The other problem that I see with Lisps are that code abusing lambdas is hard to follow. I.e. In python, lambda are used for very short functions. But in Lisp, most people nest lambda in lambda in lambdas and often don't even use good variable names or variable name at all. Lisp code feels "write-only" to me. That being said, this is more of a mentality than a language problem because it's easy to define internal functions rather than nesting everything. Similar to how javascript can be one giant pack of nested functions or well defined functions with good variable names. </ end of rant. All that being said, I think Arc (And other lisps) are amazing and I'm sad that they're not more popular.