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That one clearly describes LISP. Lisp has an abstract beauty in that it is a homoiconic language thought up as an intellectual exercise from a small number of

That one clearly describes LISP. Lisp has an abstract beauty in that it is a homoiconic language thought up as an intellectual exercise from a small number of basic rules and simple syntax. The hidden meaning, which surprised even its creator at the time that he wrote "RECURSIVE FUNCTIONS OF SYMBOLIC EXPRESSIONS AND THEIR COMPUTATION BY MACHINE", that a mathematical syntax should also be a fully implementable language to get a working interpreter, transforms the original paper into something even more beautiful and amazing than the original abstract beauty of the idea. "The hidden meaning transforms the abstract beauty". Edit: indeed, i think that one can apply to many instances of people who find programming languages and math aesthetically beautiful but also practical :P

lispm 8y ago
> Lisp has an abstract beauty in that it is a homoiconic language thought up as an intellectual exercise from a small number of basic rules and simple syntax. That's the idealistic view. Also LISP was developed over some years, based on earlier languages for list processing (IPL, ...) and similar. The paper 'RECURSIVE FUNCTIONS OF SYMBOLIC EXPRESSIONS AND THEIR COMPUTATION BY MACHINE' was a presentation to a specific (more scientific) audience, while there were earlier and at the same time already 'real' language manuals published, which were concerned with less 'abstract' topics. See for example: http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/MIT/LISP_Prog_Man-Mar_1959.pdf http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/MIT/LISP_P...