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> Source-code in a text-editor has a shape. not an iconic shape > 'icon' refers to “likeness, image, portrait”. source code is none of that. it's text.

• galaxyLogic 7y ago
  Source-code is not only text. It has structure which must follow specific syntactic rules. It is not free-form text like what we are writing here. It has structure which is the same thing as saying it has 'shape'. And that shape "forms" an image, is iconic, for the internal structure of the program which you see when you manipulate it within your Lisp-program. An image is not the same thing as the thing being imaged. Ceci'nest pa une pipe. But you can see the structure of the thing being represented by looking at the image, by the "icon", why, because the structure of the image is (to a large degree) same as the structure of the thing being imaged. Similarly the syntactic structure of Lisp source-code let's us see the structure of the program that is generated by that source-code. It is iconic. It is iconic to the thing it represents, the program, which in a sense is the same thing, just a different, but structurally isomorphic representation of the program itself. It is homoiconic.
  • lispm 7y ago
    > It has structure which is the same thing as saying it has 'shape'. Not really. Shape is a distinct visual quality. > Similarly the syntactic structure of Lisp source-code let's us see the structure of the program that is generated by that source-code. I find that questionable. > It is iconic. It is iconic to the thing it represents, the program, which in a sense is the same thing, just a different, but structurally isomorphic representation of the program itself. It is homoiconic. No, 'iconic' is concerned with different things. > but structurally isomorphic representation of the program itself That has very little to do iconic representation. Seeing textual source code as an iconic representation of the machine representation is stretching the concept beyond its intended meaning (about shape, form, graphical representation, ...).