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> I don't think it requires some great intellect to get it yeah, exactly, it doesn't. which makes lisp elitism very awkward. > LISP syntax is objectively much
by keymone 10y ago
> I don't think it requires some great intellect to get it
yeah, exactly, it doesn't. which makes lisp elitism very awkward.
> LISP syntax is objectively much more simple
things can be too simple, to the point where it is counter productive and harmful. example - why do you need all these weird symbols to represent numbers 1234567890? seems like 1 does the job just fine. unary arithmetic is trivial - just stitch numbers together and you have addition, just repeat them X times and you have multiplication. no need for weird shenanigans with symbols changing because of trivial operations.
> Clojures awkward smashing together of javascriptish syntax
i genuinely think you have difficulty letting go of your biases. all clojure did was designate two more kinds of parens to mean something useful in a language. it's a tradeoff between being pure lisp and being easier to grasp while still remaining lisp. but i can see now, tradeoffs are hard to understand for elitists/purists.
i wonder if every time when you buy a keyboard/laptop you're ripping off those damn [] and {}. because your arguments are unreasonable enough to think that might actually be true.
- kazinator 10y ago> > I don't think it requires some great intellect to get it > yeah, exactly, it doesn't. which makes lisp elitism very awkward. The thing is, people sometimes use elitism as a synonym for chauvinism, which it isn't. "Lisp is easy, everyone should use it for everything" doesn't, by itself, meet the definition elitism because it doesn't refer to some small elite group being somehow better than others.
- keymone 10y ago> "Lisp is easy, everyone should use it for everything" doesn't, by itself, meet the definition elitism agreed. > Lisp is only pure s-expressions and everybody who can't read them or wants a more 'convenient' syntax are too stupid to understand it however does meet that definition in my opinion.
- kazinator 10y agoWell, too stupid to be computer programmers, that much is true. That sort of statement is tech elitism, not Lisp elitism. Usually out of frustration when dealing with trolls. I don't believe that there are any programmers who genuinely can't deal with Lisp syntax at least as well as they deal with any other syntax. There are only trolls who lie in making that claim, and there are trolling non-programmers who tell the truth. Simplified syntax is mostly a threat to those who hold mastery of some arcane syntax as their principal intellectual achievement: i.e. advanced newbies. The fact that exactly the same semantics can be expressed in a syntax that lesser newbies can learn in a day is a big threat to someone who spent months memorizing some syntax, because it means something in which they take pride as a great value is actually worthless "fool's gold". If you're a professional who does a lot of numeric work with arithmetic expressions, working in S-exps will make you grumble, but you can do it.
- keymone 10y agoi'll just repeat what i've said before - lisp purism is not a valid reason to not adopt data literals for useful data structures. there is nothing inherently worse about [1 2 3] over (vector 1 2 3) in terms of "the lisp idea", but it is order of magnitude easier to work with in terms of ability to scan structure of code.
- kazinator 10y agoThere is nothing wrong with shorthand notations which don't disturb the surrounding Lisp syntax (don't introduce strange ambiguities and precedence issues into it and so on: and there is room to even do that a little bit). Lisp has those short-hand notations. There is nothing worse about 'X over (quote X). The only thing wrong with [1 2 3] -> (vector 1 2 3) is that it's somewhat of an unimaginative waste of these [ ] characters.
- keymone 10y agoi will waste them as i think fit, thank you very much.