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Admittedly, I've not used it for any significant period of time. But I do base a lot of language learning on the ease of use of its syntax for newcomers. Having

Admittedly, I've not used it for any significant period of time. But I do base a lot of language learning on the ease of use of its syntax for newcomers. Having to force my way through a significant project with it, just to potentially enjoy it, keeps it at the bottom of the interest list.

dragonwriter 11y ago
> But I do base a lot of language learning on the ease of use of its syntax for newcomers. From what I've observed of learners, people without lots of programming background seem to have no more problem with parens in lisps (in the broad sense -- mostly, I've seen this with Scheme and Racket) than with syntax features of various Algol-family (C, etc.) languages. People with extensive experience in programming that is mostly restricted to Algol-family languages seem to be the people who are most put-off by lisps and their parens. Which is to say, there are different kinds of newcomers.
- overcast 11y ago
  I was referring to "newcomers", as just people new to LISP, and not complete newcomers to programming languages. So more the latter of what you wrote.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > I was referring to "newcomers", as just people new to LISP, and not complete newcomers to programming languages. Sure, but not all newcomers to lisp that are familiar with programming are people that whose programming experience is tightly tied to Algol-family languages. For me, Lisp wasn't any more unwelcoming than any other new languages when I encountered it well into my experience with programming, but a number of languages I encountered much earlier in my programming life (BASIC, Forth, Logo, x86 ASM, among others) weren't Algol-family languages.
yogthos 11y ago
The fact is that there aren't actually more parens than most languages. Take a look at any JavaScript code base and you'll see far more parens there. One benefit of Lisp syntax is that it provides you visual information about relationships in the code, since it's structured as tree. The nesting tells you how functions relate to each other at a glance. It makes the code easily scannable, once you're used to reading it. Another big advantage is that you can use a structural editor with Lisp. You don't actually manage parens by hand, the editor does it for you. You can see it in action here. https://cursive-ide.com/userguide/paredit.html https://cursive-ide.com/userguide/paredit.html The syntax is actually one of the easiest ones to learn, because there is very little of it and it's very consistent. Just because it's not familiar, doesn't mean it's hard to learn. I use Clojure at work and I regularly train co-op students. I haven't had a student who took longer than a couple of weeks to become productive with the language, or didn't love using it. However, most had a negative reaction to the syntax initially.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> But I do base a lot of language learning on the ease of use of its syntax for newcomers. From what I've observed of learners, people without lots of programming background seem to have no more problem with parens in lisps (in the broad sense -- mostly, I've seen this with Scheme and Racket) than with syntax features of various Algol-family (C, etc.) languages. People with extensive experience in programming that is mostly restricted to Algol-family languages seem to be the people who are most put-off by lisps and their parens. Which is to say, there are different kinds of newcomers.

overcast 11y ago
I was referring to "newcomers", as just people new to LISP, and not complete newcomers to programming languages. So more the latter of what you wrote.
- dragonwriter 11y ago
  > I was referring to "newcomers", as just people new to LISP, and not complete newcomers to programming languages. Sure, but not all newcomers to lisp that are familiar with programming are people that whose programming experience is tightly tied to Algol-family languages. For me, Lisp wasn't any more unwelcoming than any other new languages when I encountered it well into my experience with programming, but a number of languages I encountered much earlier in my programming life (BASIC, Forth, Logo, x86 ASM, among others) weren't Algol-family languages.

yogthos 11y ago

The fact is that there aren't actually more parens than most languages. Take a look at any JavaScript code base and you'll see far more parens there. One benefit of Lisp syntax is that it provides you visual information about relationships in the code, since it's structured as tree. The nesting tells you how functions relate to each other at a glance. It makes the code easily scannable, once you're used to reading it. Another big advantage is that you can use a structural editor with Lisp. You don't actually manage parens by hand, the editor does it for you. You can see it in action here. https://cursive-ide.com/userguide/paredit.html https://cursive-ide.com/userguide/paredit.html The syntax is actually one of the easiest ones to learn, because there is very little of it and it's very consistent. Just because it's not familiar, doesn't mean it's hard to learn. I use Clojure at work and I regularly train co-op students. I haven't had a student who took longer than a couple of weeks to become productive with the language, or didn't love using it. However, most had a negative reaction to the syntax initially.