8 ms·

I thought it would be a down with Lisp article, but it was like my experience with the language, omg, how cool. From that ancient introduction to Lisp all I lea

I thought it would be a down with Lisp article, but it was like my experience with the language, omg, how cool. From that ancient introduction to Lisp all I learned was that Lisp was as close to perfection and beauty as I would get in a programming language.

kamaal 8y ago
Lisp is basically writing a program as abstract syntax tree, with facilities to modify the abstract syntax tree.
wycy 8y ago
Serious question: what is it about the "beauty" of Lisp that the HN community seems to like so much? To me, how Lisp looks is its worst quality--the number of parentheses is just mind boggling. I want to understand why it is so loved.
- kamaal 8y ago
  1. You write everything as a List. So there is syntax, but not exactly. 2. The data is also list, and your program is also a list. 3. Algorithm are basically List Manipulation(Stacks, Queues, Trees, Adjacency lists). So its easy to write complex algorithms in Lisp. 4. Tail call recursion. This part amplifies 3. further. 5. Functional programming features. 6. REPL. I mean like a real REPL. 7. Macros. 1 - 7 helps you to express problems and their solutions with code which represents exactly that. The boiler plate and other assisting code is largely non existent. Another reason is if a thing has been there around for the longest, more people have thought about it. Both quality and quantity of literature of it are higher than others.
  - blowski 8y ago
    > Another reason is if a thing has been there around for the longest, more people have thought about it. Both quality and quantity of literature of it are higher than others. Being older doesn’t necessarily mean either quantity or quality of literature will be greater. MUMPS has been around for much longer than Go, for example.
- Insanity 8y ago
  I think because it is a powerfull language - and once you learn to look past the parentheses it actually has some pretty cool features. For example, it is a homoiconic language, so any piece of data can be evaluated as if it is code. The only way to really understand it is probably to learn it :)
  - pjc50 8y ago
    I would like to make the controversial claim that homoiconicity counts against adoption; the single representation carries little structural information and the meaning of a symbol is highly dependent on its containing context. Whereas the ALGOL-derived languages use different types of bracket or other means to indicate visually what the semantics are. Ironically modern Javascript often replicates the bracket pileup, just with "})" instead. Python does away with it by having "nonindented newline" as an invisible semantic character that closes any number of scopes.
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      Hmm. I've been thinking for a while now that Lisp (and also FP) matches how some peoples' minds work, and doesn't match how other peoples' minds work. For those who match Lisp and/or FP, it's like a revelation, and it's very freeing. For others, not so much - it's a new way of programming, and you can do it that way, but why would you want to? You said: > ... the single representation carries little structural information and the meaning of a symbol is highly dependent on its containing context. That makes me wonder if the difference is abstract vs. concrete thinking - those who by nature prefer abstract thinking will find Lisp more natural, and those who prefer concrete thinking will find it clumsy and unsettling. Choosing the "right" programming language is not just finding the right language for the task (though it is that). It's also finding the right language that fits our minds - and our minds are not identical.
      - lispm 8y ago
        I think it can be learned - but one needs to have an open mind. If one has learned how a specific program look like in something like PASCAL and then later learns Lisp, there are a bunch of concepts which need to be adjusted... I started with BASIC, various Assembler variants, PASCAL, UCSD PASCAL, MODULA 2, ... and then learned Lisp variants and Scheme - and also learned basics of some other languages like ObjectPascal, SAIL, Prolog, Postscript, Smalltalk, ...
- plasticchris 8y ago
  Code is data. So you can write a program to write parts of your program, on the fly
  - collyw 8y ago
    To be fair you can do that in most modern languages. (I don't know lisp) but sometimes this approach just makes the code really difficult to understand afterwards. Does Lisp have something that makes it easier or better?
    - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
      You can, but it's like picking your nose with boxing gloves on[1] - it's really clumsy. In Lisp, it's natural and easy. It's maybe the same in result, but it's really different in ease of use. [1] Credit where due - I stole that phrase from my friend Michael Pavlinch.
      - int_19h 8y ago
        One could argue that it's made "natural and easy" by making Lisp itself much more difficult to write. So, in other languages, the macro authors pay the tax, but their users do not. In Lisp, everyone pays the tax. This is, perhaps, why writing macros is far more common in Lisp than in other languages with them - if you pay the tax either way, you might as well fully utilize what it buys you. Whereas in another language, you weigh the benefit that a macro will give you, against the tax you will pay if and only if you write a macro.
        insertcredit 8y ago
        Most "other" languages don't have Lisp-like macros, so I'm not sure what you are talking about here. I don't think Lisp is much more difficult to like, on the contrary, out of all the languages I know well (C, C++, Python, Java, Common Lisp) not only do I find CL _by far_ the easiest to write but also that it puts me in a state of flow (= unparalleled mental clarity, focus and productivity) which doesn't easily happen with the others. Credentials: I spent close to 10 years writing C++ at Google. I certainly think that Lisp is very different to most popular programming languages today and that difference is immediately obvious. This makes it very easy for people who do not like leaving their comfort zone to dismiss Lisp simply because it "feels" too strange to what they're already familiar with.
- jjnoakes 8y ago
  The beauty of lisp-like languages isn't in the visual appearance of the code as text (the parenthesis and layout), but in the structure of the code as trees, the uniformity, and the homoiconicity.
- kazagistar 8y ago
  - Different from what you are used to does not mean worse. - Structural simplicity. Instead of having a huge mess of syntax to keep track of, it has only a very small number of constructs. Simplicity is beautiful.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- tannhaeuser 8y ago
  I guess "ycombinator" (a LISP idiom/macro) as subdomain, and the fact that the site code was originally written in LISP, attracts lots of LISPers. I'm personally not a big fan of LISP, much less of the frequent hijacking of threads to degenerate into discussions about sexprs supremacy and other holier-than-though topics.
- fnordsensei 8y ago
  Presumably, this is because you've looked at Lisp code, but you probably haven't understood Lisp. Criticizing it on the basis of parenthesis would be roughly equivalent to criticizing someone talking about the beauty of mathematics on the basis of the color of the piece of chalk they're using. It's true that it's criticism about aesthetics, but it's not criticism about the aesthetics that the mathematician was talking about. Once you've understood in what sense people mean that Lisp is beautiful, you can disagree, but this disagreement will not concern parentheses. As an aside: I have a similarly shallow aesthetic aversion to JS syntax for the same reason. When I encounter a 12-line ragged cascade of curly brackets, square brackets and parentheses, sprinkled with semicolons, I wonder how that can be considered OK. Aside 2: with Lisp, you edit programs structurally, meaning that their position is essentially managed for you. This is what people refer to when they mean that "the brackets disappear after a while." You're not focusing on them; they're handled by something else. In my editor, I have the closing brackets faded nearly into the background, which reflects how concerned I am about their existence.
  - krapp 8y ago
    >When I encounter a 12-line ragged cascade of curly brackets, square brackets and parentheses, sprinkled with semicolons, I wonder how that can be considered OK. It's considered OK because the extra syntax carries semantic weight, and the semicolons disambiguate intent for the interpreter (because while semicolons are optional in javascript, leaving them out can lead to errors.) And as someone just beginning to play around with (Arc) Lisp, I still can appreciate both paradigms. Neither is objectively wrong.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - 3b9cd7355317f55 8y ago
      > It's considered OK because the extra syntax carries semantic weight, and the semicolons disambiguate intent for the interpreter (because while semicolons are optional in javascript, leaving them out can lead to errors.) Which is a very roundabout way of saying that JavaScript has a very complicated grammar. Is it necessary? No, it isn't. People use and love languages with much simpler grammars, such as FORTH (reverse Polish notation), APL (monadic and dyadic algebraic notation), and Lisp (fully parenthesized Polish notation).
- taeric 8y ago
  In many ways it is the parsimony that is beautiful. There is a ton of syntax in lisp, but there are not as many punctuation requirements. And you get to play with the grammar and many parts of syntax yourself. Contrast this with most other languages, where there are many things the language does that you can not do. At least, not easily.
- lisper 8y ago
  > the number of parentheses is just mind boggling There aren't actually more parens in a Lisp program than a program written in a C-like syntax (which is really an algol-like syntax). They just stand out more for two reasons: 1. There is less punctuation in general, so the parens are more obvious. Instead of f(x, y, z) you write (f x y z). Without the commas, the parens stand out because that's all that is left. 2. There is only one kind of parens in Lisp whereas C-like languages use at least three: (), [], and {}, so that makes any particular kind of paren less prominent.
  - samatman 8y ago
    3. Lisps optimize tail calls, leading to easier and more efficient recursion. This does tend to increase depth of code. 4. The lisp punctuation style closes all levels on a single line, where most C code guidelines close one level per line. This leads to a "thick" chunk of close parens that students of lisp find harder to read at first.
  - beders 8y ago
    > There is less punctuation in general, so the parens are more obvious. Instead of f(x, y, z) you write (f x y z). Without the commas, the parens stand out because that's all that is left. Well put, Madam/Sir.
  - dxhdr 8y ago
    I believe it's purely seeing lines that end with )))))))) that leads the OP's observation ("To me, how Lisp looks is its worst quality--the number of parentheses is just mind boggling"). You don't get that in a C-like syntax. In practice you don't read each individual closing paren to understand the code so it doesn't matter. But it sure looks "scary."
    - lisper 8y ago
      > You don't get that in a C-like syntax. No, instead you get something like );}]);) except that that's usually split up over several lines. BTW, it's pretty easy to tweak Lisp's syntax so that your parens don't get so deeply nested. See https://github.com/rongarret/tweetnacl/blob/master/ratchet.lisp https://github.com/rongarret/tweetnacl/blob/master/ratchet.l... for an example.
- gmfawcett 8y ago
  There's also a historical componenent in all of this. Modern languages have adopted many features from the old Lisps that were quite unique back then. The same is true with the ML language family: between the two, ML and Lisp seeded a new generation of languages that are, on average, much more powerful than the languages in common use in the 1970s and 80s. (Smalltalk deserves a special mention, but it came later.) I'm still fond of Lisp, but languages like Python, D, Nim (and increasingly, Rust) offer a lot of the Lisp affordances that I really valued -- in particular, easy compile-time metaprogramming. The biggest missing bits are Lisp's deeply integrated REPL-driven programming, and the use of program images -- which have many drawbacks but also some benefits. IMO, everyone should write and maintain a medium-sized program in a modern Lisp (SBCL, CCL) at least once, just to get an appreciation for how different the programming / debugging experience is. So many well-integrated tools at your disposal, even at runtime.
- Jach 8y ago
  You really just have to dive into it. This image is of Scheme, but the sentiment holds for Common Lisp too: https://www.thejach.com/imgs/lisp_parens.png https://www.thejach.com/imgs/lisp_parens.png
- mcguire 8y ago
  If the worst thing you can say about a programming language is that you don't like it's syntax, then it is a pretty damn good language. Lisp (or Scheme, in this case) is a very simple language that gets essentially everything right.
  - fasquoika 8y ago
    >Lisp (or Scheme, in this case) is a very simple language that gets essentially everything right. I have to wonder if you actually know all that much about Scheme. Undelimited continuations, for example, are pretty much strictly broken. I like Scheme, but to claim it's flawless is kinda ridiculous.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    It's not the only thing people complain about ; merely the first one. And I don't think anyone can seriously claim that Common Lisp is a simple language. Powerful pragmatic languages never are. As far as syntax goes, the proof is in the pudding. All languages have people gripe about some part of their syntax or another, but it's clear from experience that "OMG parentheses" is exceptionally prevalent. Hand-waving it away as something that people just don't get because of lack of prior exposure is not really sound - somehow other languages don't get similar complaints (at least, not as universally, and not to the same magnitude) with first-time users. Besides, why is there a lack of exposure? Why, because everything else is different. But why is it different? Isn't the obvious conclusion that Algol syntax family is vastly more prevalent for the simple reason that people prefer it, and simple homoiconicity is not sufficiently enticing? All arguments in favor of Lisp syntax feel like they ultimately boil down to "you're holding it wrong". And that may well be so - but if so many people are finding it so awkward to hold, isn't that prima facie evidence of ergonomic deficiency? I don't claim to understand why Algol-style is easier. Maybe the way our visual processing works is just better with more varied punctuation? That's something for psychologists and brain scientists and maybe linguists to figure out. But in the meantime, we could at least acknowledge the way things are. I really like Lisp as a collection of ideas (not just the usual ones like HOF and macros, but also stuff like e.g. symbol-based namespacing, or the sheer flexibility of CLOS). But lispers have to ask themselves why, instead of Lisp seeing wider adoption, other languages - that came literally decades later, so "upstart" would be a very polite way to describe them in this context! - become vastly more successful than Lisp by appropriating its cherry-picked features.
- drbojingle 8y ago
  From my short study, I would guess the uniformity and simplicity of it the syntax and the ability to extend it (thanks in part to the uniformity and simplicity of its syntax).
- gumby 8y ago
  Once you start using it you don't really see the parentheses, you simply see the atoms and structure. OTOH distinctions like expressions vs statements don't apply -- my years as a lisp developer were the most productive of my life.
- thisiszilff 8y ago
  The biggest benefit is that you can keep a very clear model of everything that's going on in the language (well, most things), from parsing to evaluation to application. The parenthesize represent very important things about how the language works and the regularity of the language emphasizes that it's a few basic principles replicated again and again. Also, the "beautiful" lisp variants tend to be in the scheme family. Common lisp is wart and pragmatic by comparison.
  - insertcredit 8y ago
    There is no difference between Scheme and Common Lisp when it comes to parentheses and beauty. Everything you mention (simplicity, regularity, few basic principles) apply just the same to Common Lisp. The differences between the two are mostly standard library related (irrelevant to matters of beauty) and lisp-1 vs lisp-2 (no clear winner in terms of beauty I would say).
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

kamaal 8y ago

Lisp is basically writing a program as abstract syntax tree, with facilities to modify the abstract syntax tree.

wycy 8y ago

Serious question: what is it about the "beauty" of Lisp that the HN community seems to like so much? To me, how Lisp looks is its worst quality--the number of parentheses is just mind boggling. I want to understand why it is so loved.

kamaal 8y ago
1. You write everything as a List. So there is syntax, but not exactly. 2. The data is also list, and your program is also a list. 3. Algorithm are basically List Manipulation(Stacks, Queues, Trees, Adjacency lists). So its easy to write complex algorithms in Lisp. 4. Tail call recursion. This part amplifies 3. further. 5. Functional programming features. 6. REPL. I mean like a real REPL. 7. Macros. 1 - 7 helps you to express problems and their solutions with code which represents exactly that. The boiler plate and other assisting code is largely non existent. Another reason is if a thing has been there around for the longest, more people have thought about it. Both quality and quantity of literature of it are higher than others.
- blowski 8y ago
  > Another reason is if a thing has been there around for the longest, more people have thought about it. Both quality and quantity of literature of it are higher than others. Being older doesn’t necessarily mean either quantity or quality of literature will be greater. MUMPS has been around for much longer than Go, for example.
Insanity 8y ago
I think because it is a powerfull language - and once you learn to look past the parentheses it actually has some pretty cool features. For example, it is a homoiconic language, so any piece of data can be evaluated as if it is code. The only way to really understand it is probably to learn it :)
- pjc50 8y ago
  I would like to make the controversial claim that homoiconicity counts against adoption; the single representation carries little structural information and the meaning of a symbol is highly dependent on its containing context. Whereas the ALGOL-derived languages use different types of bracket or other means to indicate visually what the semantics are. Ironically modern Javascript often replicates the bracket pileup, just with "})" instead. Python does away with it by having "nonindented newline" as an invisible semantic character that closes any number of scopes.
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    Hmm. I've been thinking for a while now that Lisp (and also FP) matches how some peoples' minds work, and doesn't match how other peoples' minds work. For those who match Lisp and/or FP, it's like a revelation, and it's very freeing. For others, not so much - it's a new way of programming, and you can do it that way, but why would you want to? You said: > ... the single representation carries little structural information and the meaning of a symbol is highly dependent on its containing context. That makes me wonder if the difference is abstract vs. concrete thinking - those who by nature prefer abstract thinking will find Lisp more natural, and those who prefer concrete thinking will find it clumsy and unsettling. Choosing the "right" programming language is not just finding the right language for the task (though it is that). It's also finding the right language that fits our minds - and our minds are not identical.
    - lispm 8y ago
      I think it can be learned - but one needs to have an open mind. If one has learned how a specific program look like in something like PASCAL and then later learns Lisp, there are a bunch of concepts which need to be adjusted... I started with BASIC, various Assembler variants, PASCAL, UCSD PASCAL, MODULA 2, ... and then learned Lisp variants and Scheme - and also learned basics of some other languages like ObjectPascal, SAIL, Prolog, Postscript, Smalltalk, ...
plasticchris 8y ago
Code is data. So you can write a program to write parts of your program, on the fly
- collyw 8y ago
  To be fair you can do that in most modern languages. (I don't know lisp) but sometimes this approach just makes the code really difficult to understand afterwards. Does Lisp have something that makes it easier or better?
  - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
    You can, but it's like picking your nose with boxing gloves on[1] - it's really clumsy. In Lisp, it's natural and easy. It's maybe the same in result, but it's really different in ease of use. [1] Credit where due - I stole that phrase from my friend Michael Pavlinch.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      One could argue that it's made "natural and easy" by making Lisp itself much more difficult to write. So, in other languages, the macro authors pay the tax, but their users do not. In Lisp, everyone pays the tax. This is, perhaps, why writing macros is far more common in Lisp than in other languages with them - if you pay the tax either way, you might as well fully utilize what it buys you. Whereas in another language, you weigh the benefit that a macro will give you, against the tax you will pay if and only if you write a macro.
      - insertcredit 8y ago
        Most "other" languages don't have Lisp-like macros, so I'm not sure what you are talking about here. I don't think Lisp is much more difficult to like, on the contrary, out of all the languages I know well (C, C++, Python, Java, Common Lisp) not only do I find CL _by far_ the easiest to write but also that it puts me in a state of flow (= unparalleled mental clarity, focus and productivity) which doesn't easily happen with the others. Credentials: I spent close to 10 years writing C++ at Google. I certainly think that Lisp is very different to most popular programming languages today and that difference is immediately obvious. This makes it very easy for people who do not like leaving their comfort zone to dismiss Lisp simply because it "feels" too strange to what they're already familiar with.
jjnoakes 8y ago
The beauty of lisp-like languages isn't in the visual appearance of the code as text (the parenthesis and layout), but in the structure of the code as trees, the uniformity, and the homoiconicity.
kazagistar 8y ago
- Different from what you are used to does not mean worse. - Structural simplicity. Instead of having a huge mess of syntax to keep track of, it has only a very small number of constructs. Simplicity is beautiful.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
tannhaeuser 8y ago
I guess "ycombinator" (a LISP idiom/macro) as subdomain, and the fact that the site code was originally written in LISP, attracts lots of LISPers. I'm personally not a big fan of LISP, much less of the frequent hijacking of threads to degenerate into discussions about sexprs supremacy and other holier-than-though topics.
fnordsensei 8y ago
Presumably, this is because you've looked at Lisp code, but you probably haven't understood Lisp. Criticizing it on the basis of parenthesis would be roughly equivalent to criticizing someone talking about the beauty of mathematics on the basis of the color of the piece of chalk they're using. It's true that it's criticism about aesthetics, but it's not criticism about the aesthetics that the mathematician was talking about. Once you've understood in what sense people mean that Lisp is beautiful, you can disagree, but this disagreement will not concern parentheses. As an aside: I have a similarly shallow aesthetic aversion to JS syntax for the same reason. When I encounter a 12-line ragged cascade of curly brackets, square brackets and parentheses, sprinkled with semicolons, I wonder how that can be considered OK. Aside 2: with Lisp, you edit programs structurally, meaning that their position is essentially managed for you. This is what people refer to when they mean that "the brackets disappear after a while." You're not focusing on them; they're handled by something else. In my editor, I have the closing brackets faded nearly into the background, which reflects how concerned I am about their existence.
- krapp 8y ago
  >When I encounter a 12-line ragged cascade of curly brackets, square brackets and parentheses, sprinkled with semicolons, I wonder how that can be considered OK. It's considered OK because the extra syntax carries semantic weight, and the semicolons disambiguate intent for the interpreter (because while semicolons are optional in javascript, leaving them out can lead to errors.) And as someone just beginning to play around with (Arc) Lisp, I still can appreciate both paradigms. Neither is objectively wrong.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - 3b9cd7355317f55 8y ago
    > It's considered OK because the extra syntax carries semantic weight, and the semicolons disambiguate intent for the interpreter (because while semicolons are optional in javascript, leaving them out can lead to errors.) Which is a very roundabout way of saying that JavaScript has a very complicated grammar. Is it necessary? No, it isn't. People use and love languages with much simpler grammars, such as FORTH (reverse Polish notation), APL (monadic and dyadic algebraic notation), and Lisp (fully parenthesized Polish notation).
taeric 8y ago
In many ways it is the parsimony that is beautiful. There is a ton of syntax in lisp, but there are not as many punctuation requirements. And you get to play with the grammar and many parts of syntax yourself. Contrast this with most other languages, where there are many things the language does that you can not do. At least, not easily.
lisper 8y ago
> the number of parentheses is just mind boggling There aren't actually more parens in a Lisp program than a program written in a C-like syntax (which is really an algol-like syntax). They just stand out more for two reasons: 1. There is less punctuation in general, so the parens are more obvious. Instead of f(x, y, z) you write (f x y z). Without the commas, the parens stand out because that's all that is left. 2. There is only one kind of parens in Lisp whereas C-like languages use at least three: (), [], and {}, so that makes any particular kind of paren less prominent.
- samatman 8y ago
  3. Lisps optimize tail calls, leading to easier and more efficient recursion. This does tend to increase depth of code. 4. The lisp punctuation style closes all levels on a single line, where most C code guidelines close one level per line. This leads to a "thick" chunk of close parens that students of lisp find harder to read at first.
- beders 8y ago
  > There is less punctuation in general, so the parens are more obvious. Instead of f(x, y, z) you write (f x y z). Without the commas, the parens stand out because that's all that is left. Well put, Madam/Sir.
- dxhdr 8y ago
  I believe it's purely seeing lines that end with )))))))) that leads the OP's observation ("To me, how Lisp looks is its worst quality--the number of parentheses is just mind boggling"). You don't get that in a C-like syntax. In practice you don't read each individual closing paren to understand the code so it doesn't matter. But it sure looks "scary."
  - lisper 8y ago
    > You don't get that in a C-like syntax. No, instead you get something like );}]);) except that that's usually split up over several lines. BTW, it's pretty easy to tweak Lisp's syntax so that your parens don't get so deeply nested. See https://github.com/rongarret/tweetnacl/blob/master/ratchet.lisp https://github.com/rongarret/tweetnacl/blob/master/ratchet.l... for an example.
gmfawcett 8y ago
There's also a historical componenent in all of this. Modern languages have adopted many features from the old Lisps that were quite unique back then. The same is true with the ML language family: between the two, ML and Lisp seeded a new generation of languages that are, on average, much more powerful than the languages in common use in the 1970s and 80s. (Smalltalk deserves a special mention, but it came later.) I'm still fond of Lisp, but languages like Python, D, Nim (and increasingly, Rust) offer a lot of the Lisp affordances that I really valued -- in particular, easy compile-time metaprogramming. The biggest missing bits are Lisp's deeply integrated REPL-driven programming, and the use of program images -- which have many drawbacks but also some benefits. IMO, everyone should write and maintain a medium-sized program in a modern Lisp (SBCL, CCL) at least once, just to get an appreciation for how different the programming / debugging experience is. So many well-integrated tools at your disposal, even at runtime.
Jach 8y ago
You really just have to dive into it. This image is of Scheme, but the sentiment holds for Common Lisp too: https://www.thejach.com/imgs/lisp_parens.png https://www.thejach.com/imgs/lisp_parens.png
mcguire 8y ago
If the worst thing you can say about a programming language is that you don't like it's syntax, then it is a pretty damn good language. Lisp (or Scheme, in this case) is a very simple language that gets essentially everything right.
- fasquoika 8y ago
  >Lisp (or Scheme, in this case) is a very simple language that gets essentially everything right. I have to wonder if you actually know all that much about Scheme. Undelimited continuations, for example, are pretty much strictly broken. I like Scheme, but to claim it's flawless is kinda ridiculous.
- int_19h 8y ago
  It's not the only thing people complain about ; merely the first one. And I don't think anyone can seriously claim that Common Lisp is a simple language. Powerful pragmatic languages never are. As far as syntax goes, the proof is in the pudding. All languages have people gripe about some part of their syntax or another, but it's clear from experience that "OMG parentheses" is exceptionally prevalent. Hand-waving it away as something that people just don't get because of lack of prior exposure is not really sound - somehow other languages don't get similar complaints (at least, not as universally, and not to the same magnitude) with first-time users. Besides, why is there a lack of exposure? Why, because everything else is different. But why is it different? Isn't the obvious conclusion that Algol syntax family is vastly more prevalent for the simple reason that people prefer it, and simple homoiconicity is not sufficiently enticing? All arguments in favor of Lisp syntax feel like they ultimately boil down to "you're holding it wrong". And that may well be so - but if so many people are finding it so awkward to hold, isn't that prima facie evidence of ergonomic deficiency? I don't claim to understand why Algol-style is easier. Maybe the way our visual processing works is just better with more varied punctuation? That's something for psychologists and brain scientists and maybe linguists to figure out. But in the meantime, we could at least acknowledge the way things are. I really like Lisp as a collection of ideas (not just the usual ones like HOF and macros, but also stuff like e.g. symbol-based namespacing, or the sheer flexibility of CLOS). But lispers have to ask themselves why, instead of Lisp seeing wider adoption, other languages - that came literally decades later, so "upstart" would be a very polite way to describe them in this context! - become vastly more successful than Lisp by appropriating its cherry-picked features.
drbojingle 8y ago
From my short study, I would guess the uniformity and simplicity of it the syntax and the ability to extend it (thanks in part to the uniformity and simplicity of its syntax).
gumby 8y ago
Once you start using it you don't really see the parentheses, you simply see the atoms and structure. OTOH distinctions like expressions vs statements don't apply -- my years as a lisp developer were the most productive of my life.
thisiszilff 8y ago
The biggest benefit is that you can keep a very clear model of everything that's going on in the language (well, most things), from parsing to evaluation to application. The parenthesize represent very important things about how the language works and the regularity of the language emphasizes that it's a few basic principles replicated again and again. Also, the "beautiful" lisp variants tend to be in the scheme family. Common lisp is wart and pragmatic by comparison.
- insertcredit 8y ago
  There is no difference between Scheme and Common Lisp when it comes to parentheses and beauty. Everything you mention (simplicity, regularity, few basic principles) apply just the same to Common Lisp. The differences between the two are mostly standard library related (irrelevant to matters of beauty) and lisp-1 vs lisp-2 (no clear winner in terms of beauty I would say).

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]