4 ms·

vaguely kinda related. I want to like lisp for its features but the syntax is too much for me to pick up without serious time investment, which I am not sure I

vaguely kinda related. I want to like lisp for its features but the syntax is too much for me to pick up without serious time investment, which I am not sure I want to make. are there any other languages that support for example lisp-like interactive REPL, eg analyzing program state while it is running?

cess11 4y ago
Lisp syntax is a lack of syntax, it takes five minutes to learn. Everything being an expression, expressions being replaceable by their evaluation, quote/unquote/quasiquote, macros is what'll take time to adapt to. Conveniently analysing program state while it's running is more a feature of languages that run in an image than something lisplikes have in common, like Common Lisp, Factor and Pharo, but not Racket or Guile.
xigoi 4y ago
Funnily, I'm the exact opposite. I love the simple and consistent syntax of Lisp, but I don't want to use a dynamically typed language if I can avoid it.
- tmtvl 4y ago
  That's why I fell in love with SBCL, it'll warn me about things like "hey, you told me this variable is an integer, but you're calling length on it, that doesn't make sense."
tasuki 4y ago
> the syntax is too much for me to pick up without serious time investment Umm, do you know any language with simpler syntax than Lisp has? For me, the main problem with Lisp is that there's so many Lisps. I think I philosophically prefer Scheme over Common Lisp, but then again there are so many Schemes to choose from!
dragonwriter 4y ago
> I want to like lisp for its features but the syntax is too much for me to pick up without serious time investment There's atoms, and lists, and at the highest level of a program, the head of the list is the thing to be invoked (function, macro, special form) and the tail is a list of args. At lower levels, the higher level context says what a list means, but either a list itself or the same head/tail interpretation are the main things. And there are some quoting constructs that control if things are bare atoms or references to the values of names, etc., and that's about it. Lisp has very little syntax. I mean, unless your main language is raw assembler or some esoteric toy like brainfuck, lisp almost certainly has much less syntax. > are there any other languages that support for example lisp-like interactive REPL, eg analyzing program state while it is running? Erlang. Ruby (via Pry). Lots of others.

cess11 4y ago

Lisp syntax is a lack of syntax, it takes five minutes to learn. Everything being an expression, expressions being replaceable by their evaluation, quote/unquote/quasiquote, macros is what'll take time to adapt to. Conveniently analysing program state while it's running is more a feature of languages that run in an image than something lisplikes have in common, like Common Lisp, Factor and Pharo, but not Racket or Guile.

xigoi 4y ago

Funnily, I'm the exact opposite. I love the simple and consistent syntax of Lisp, but I don't want to use a dynamically typed language if I can avoid it.

tmtvl 4y ago
That's why I fell in love with SBCL, it'll warn me about things like "hey, you told me this variable is an integer, but you're calling length on it, that doesn't make sense."

tasuki 4y ago

> the syntax is too much for me to pick up without serious time investment Umm, do you know any language with simpler syntax than Lisp has? For me, the main problem with Lisp is that there's so many Lisps. I think I philosophically prefer Scheme over Common Lisp, but then again there are so many Schemes to choose from!

dragonwriter 4y ago

> I want to like lisp for its features but the syntax is too much for me to pick up without serious time investment There's atoms, and lists, and at the highest level of a program, the head of the list is the thing to be invoked (function, macro, special form) and the tail is a list of args. At lower levels, the higher level context says what a list means, but either a list itself or the same head/tail interpretation are the main things. And there are some quoting constructs that control if things are bare atoms or references to the values of names, etc., and that's about it. Lisp has very little syntax. I mean, unless your main language is raw assembler or some esoteric toy like brainfuck, lisp almost certainly has much less syntax. > are there any other languages that support for example lisp-like interactive REPL, eg analyzing program state while it is running? Erlang. Ruby (via Pry). Lots of others.