4 ms·

But lispers are only a small % of programmers. So parentheses have been a success in the sense that lispers really like them, but have been a failure in the sen

by mantap 7y ago

But lispers are only a small % of programmers. So parentheses have been a success in the sense that lispers really like them, but have been a failure in the sense that they have prevented lisp's cool semantics from reaching a broader audience. If you are a JS programmer or God-forbid a C++ programmer, you are already living in a world where the transformation from lexical syntax to AST is dozens or hundreds of pages with weird edge cases (e.g. JS semicolon insertion or C++ most vexing parse). If that can be reduced to 1 or 2 pages it's still a massive improvement from their perspective even if it looks like a downgrade to a hardcore lisper who eats parentheses for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

lispm 7y ago
> sense that lispers really like Lisp programmers's don't 'like parentheses' - parentheses is not what makes Lisp. Lisp was designed to do programming with s-expressions (aka nested lists). That's its core original purpose. Lisp even means 'List Processor'. It was then early detected that this can be applied to Lisp itself, for example by interpreting s-expressions as Lisp programs. 'Parentheses' are just a part of the notation. If you take away the feature of s-expressions on the surface and thus also the notation, you are no longer programming on the surface in classic Lisp. You can always use alternative notations, but that will take away the seamless symbolic programming. > failure in the sense that they have prevented lisp's cool semantics from reaching a broader audience 'parentheses' did not prevent that. Over decades lots of original Lisp stuff was moved to other languages (garbage collection, image-based programming, functional programming, macros, etc.). There are lots of languages which are somewhat re-invented or re-designed Lisps: Logo, Dylan, Julia, Ruby, ... One can already use those. Lisp should drop s-expression-based syntax, so that C++ or JavaScript become different internally? This makes no sense. > If you are a JS programmer or God-forbid a C++ programmer, you are already living in a world where the transformation from lexical syntax to AST is dozens or hundreds of pages with weird edge cases (e.g. JS semicolon insertion or C++ most vexing parse). If that can be reduced to 1 or 2 pages it's still a massive improvement from their perspective even if it looks like a downgrade to a hardcore lisper who eats parentheses for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Complain to those. Not to a Lisp programmer.

by mantap 7y ago

lispm 7y ago

> sense that lispers really like Lisp programmers's don't 'like parentheses' - parentheses is not what makes Lisp. Lisp was designed to do programming with s-expressions (aka nested lists). That's its core original purpose. Lisp even means 'List Processor'. It was then early detected that this can be applied to Lisp itself, for example by interpreting s-expressions as Lisp programs. 'Parentheses' are just a part of the notation. If you take away the feature of s-expressions on the surface and thus also the notation, you are no longer programming on the surface in classic Lisp. You can always use alternative notations, but that will take away the seamless symbolic programming. > failure in the sense that they have prevented lisp's cool semantics from reaching a broader audience 'parentheses' did not prevent that. Over decades lots of original Lisp stuff was moved to other languages (garbage collection, image-based programming, functional programming, macros, etc.). There are lots of languages which are somewhat re-invented or re-designed Lisps: Logo, Dylan, Julia, Ruby, ... One can already use those. Lisp should drop s-expression-based syntax, so that C++ or JavaScript become different internally? This makes no sense. > If you are a JS programmer or God-forbid a C++ programmer, you are already living in a world where the transformation from lexical syntax to AST is dozens or hundreds of pages with weird edge cases (e.g. JS semicolon insertion or C++ most vexing parse). If that can be reduced to 1 or 2 pages it's still a massive improvement from their perspective even if it looks like a downgrade to a hardcore lisper who eats parentheses for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Complain to those. Not to a Lisp programmer.