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I agree with the grandparent that (contrary to the vague group of Lisp zealots mentioned) understand Lisp and hate the parentheses. On the other hand I also agr

by merijnv 16y ago

I agree with the grandparent that (contrary to the vague group of Lisp zealots mentioned) understand Lisp and hate the parentheses. On the other hand I also agree with you that there is probably not market/interest in this group of people to learn "Lisp with an alternate syntax". As someone with an interest in programming languages I do feel I have reasonable grasp on Lisp's s-expressions, but I dislike the parentheses syntax. However I don't think an alternate syntax would help me, most Lisp would still be parenthesis Lisp... I think most of people like me instead flock to functional languages like Haskell. As I mentioned in an earlier Haskell discussion I think Lisp's macros are probably more powerful (in the sense that they can express more then Haskell code), but like a lot of Haskell coders I just don't agree with the Lispers that this (slight?) increase in expressibility is worth the loss of readable Haskell syntax.

aerique 16y ago
Are you from a maths background? I'm not and having played with Haskell a little the syntax is a real turn-off for me. For me Lisp is a lot more readable.
- merijnv 16y ago
  No, I have a CS background, my first languages were Java and Python. I only started looking into the math related to programming languages after Haskell. Do you have any examples of. Which syntax makes it unclear to you? I think the uniformity of Lisp syntax makes it hard to scan and find the various parts I'm interested in. Especially the quote operators can be nefariously easy to gloss over...
  - aerique 16y ago
    I guess it's just a matter of experience then, I find Lisp pretty easy to scan through. So we can debate this until the end of time apparently. :-) With regard to Haskell the original post eloquently sum up most of my problems with it (and then so more). edit: Haha, I thought this thread was attached to the "Lisk" topic (Lisp syntax for Haskell) that's what I meant with "original post" above.
    - merijnv 16y ago
      Ah, I saw the Lisk topic, and while agree that Haskell's very exact whitespace could be annoying without a good editor (mine automatically indents correctly anyway so I never have problems), if its such a big deal you could just use {} and semi-colons as that is valid syntax as well. You only have to do exact whitespacing if you don't use those, although it might be easier to just use a decent editor instead.

by merijnv 16y ago

aerique 16y ago

Are you from a maths background? I'm not and having played with Haskell a little the syntax is a real turn-off for me. For me Lisp is a lot more readable.

merijnv 16y ago
No, I have a CS background, my first languages were Java and Python. I only started looking into the math related to programming languages after Haskell. Do you have any examples of. Which syntax makes it unclear to you? I think the uniformity of Lisp syntax makes it hard to scan and find the various parts I'm interested in. Especially the quote operators can be nefariously easy to gloss over...
- aerique 16y ago
  I guess it's just a matter of experience then, I find Lisp pretty easy to scan through. So we can debate this until the end of time apparently. :-) With regard to Haskell the original post eloquently sum up most of my problems with it (and then so more). edit: Haha, I thought this thread was attached to the "Lisk" topic (Lisp syntax for Haskell) that's what I meant with "original post" above.
  - merijnv 16y ago
    Ah, I saw the Lisk topic, and while agree that Haskell's very exact whitespace could be annoying without a good editor (mine automatically indents correctly anyway so I never have problems), if its such a big deal you could just use {} and semi-colons as that is valid syntax as well. You only have to do exact whitespacing if you don't use those, although it might be easier to just use a decent editor instead.