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I am curious. Could you elaborate? How would it be useful compared to, say Python to someone who is not going to use it for primary work?
by 0xakhil 8y ago
I am curious. Could you elaborate? How would it be useful compared to, say Python to someone who is not going to use it for primary work?
- lisper 8y agoPython is not a bad choice nowadays. When I started out, Python did not exist. But even today CL has a few killer features that no other language has. Three in particular are huge levers for me: macros, generic functions, and the ability to redefine classes without having to recreate all the existing instances. S-expressions in general are also a huge lever. Ironically, the reason they are a huge lever is that they are simple to parse, and because they are simple to parse you can easily write an S-expression parser in any language, but hardly anyone does. Learning to "think in S-expressions" just takes you to a whole new level of understanding. It's the red pill. (But it's a bit dangerous too because once you get there, the syntax of other languages will just start to feel annoying.)