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The questions from people that have obviously never used Lisp haven't changed in 50 years.. "Why all the parenthesis" "Lisp is too arcane" etc. I can't be too
by hvs 17y ago
The questions from people that have obviously never used Lisp haven't changed in 50 years.. "Why all the parenthesis" "Lisp is too arcane" etc. I can't be too hard on them, I used to think the same thing. But once you make a commitment to actually learn the language (just like any other language), you find a beautiful language that allows you to write very compact code with a minimum of boilerplate.
I'm constantly amazed at how many ideas that Lisp came up with years ago that are just now starting to gain wider acceptance in more mainstream languages. It's unfortunate that superficial complaints about syntax prevent so many developers from giving this language a chance.
- gfodor 17y agoArguably having slightly unfamiliar syntax that has long term benefits (like lisp's parens) provides an excellent filter against programmers who you really don't want in your community, anyway. I find that people who obsess over syntax are often the ones who know the least about programming and computer science in general. That said, some syntax choices are horrifically bad, and make simple things hard. But lisp's parens are not an example of this, just the opposite.