4 ms·

This comes off more as a series of rationalizations than a compelling argument. Lisp is easy for a computer to parse, not great for humans. There other language

by norir 3y ago

This comes off more as a series of rationalizations than a compelling argument. Lisp is easy for a computer to parse, not great for humans. There other languages with comparably rich metaprogramming that syntactically have a better tradeoff between computer and human legibility.

worewood 3y ago
Yeah, it reads like "parentheses are good, here is a 50-page essay on why" - sounds like the author is grasping at straws.
phoe-krk 3y ago
> Lisp is easy for a computer to parse, not great for humans. Which is why "best of both worlds" approaches work best in my opinion, no matter if it's "just" automatic indentation and paren-counting that leaves actual editing to humans, or more intrusive approaches like Parinfer (mentioned in the article) that automatically infer parenthesisation from code indentation and edit the code as appropriate. Properly indented Lisp is easy to read (for me), and badly indented code can be misread even in languages like C++.
packetlost 3y ago
Nah, parenthesis are easy to parse with the eye if you spend even a small amount of time working with them. You still have to indent reasonably like you would with every other syntax.
gary_0 3y ago
If I wanted to I could get used to reading Lisp. I could also get used to reading Klingon. But I never had to get used to reading Python.
davexunit 3y ago
Speak for yourself, I find the lisp syntax to be among the easiest to read.
- norir 3y ago
  I am not a lisp hater. There are advantages to its syntax relative to other languages. I am just saying that in the space of programming languages, there exist other languages capable of solving the same problems as lisp in essentially the same way using fewer characters simply by removing some of the excessive parens and adding syntactic support for the most common operations (assignment, scoping, calling functions, data structure instantiation). Even if the total characters is a wash, not having to chase down dangling missed closed brackets or rely on an external tool to highlight 15 levels of parens and/or auto insert 10 ugly parens at thee end of a nested code block is a nice QOL improvement in my opinion. Again, none of this is saying that lisp is bad. I just think we can have nicer things and preserve the important semantic insights that lisp gives us.
  - lispm 3y ago
    > not having to chase down dangling missed closed brackets or rely on an external tool to highlight 15 levels of parens and/or auto insert 10 ugly parens at thee end of a nested code block is a nice QOL improvement in my opinion. Development environments with syntax support are common. These are not "external", they are nowadays "integrated". See the features of typical Java IDEs. Java uses tools to edit code, so does Lisp.

by norir 3y ago

worewood 3y ago

Yeah, it reads like "parentheses are good, here is a 50-page essay on why" - sounds like the author is grasping at straws.

phoe-krk 3y ago

> Lisp is easy for a computer to parse, not great for humans. Which is why "best of both worlds" approaches work best in my opinion, no matter if it's "just" automatic indentation and paren-counting that leaves actual editing to humans, or more intrusive approaches like Parinfer (mentioned in the article) that automatically infer parenthesisation from code indentation and edit the code as appropriate. Properly indented Lisp is easy to read (for me), and badly indented code can be misread even in languages like C++.

packetlost 3y ago

Nah, parenthesis are easy to parse with the eye if you spend even a small amount of time working with them. You still have to indent reasonably like you would with every other syntax.

gary_0 3y ago

If I wanted to I could get used to reading Lisp. I could also get used to reading Klingon. But I never had to get used to reading Python.

davexunit 3y ago

Speak for yourself, I find the lisp syntax to be among the easiest to read.

norir 3y ago
I am not a lisp hater. There are advantages to its syntax relative to other languages. I am just saying that in the space of programming languages, there exist other languages capable of solving the same problems as lisp in essentially the same way using fewer characters simply by removing some of the excessive parens and adding syntactic support for the most common operations (assignment, scoping, calling functions, data structure instantiation). Even if the total characters is a wash, not having to chase down dangling missed closed brackets or rely on an external tool to highlight 15 levels of parens and/or auto insert 10 ugly parens at thee end of a nested code block is a nice QOL improvement in my opinion. Again, none of this is saying that lisp is bad. I just think we can have nicer things and preserve the important semantic insights that lisp gives us.
- lispm 3y ago
  > not having to chase down dangling missed closed brackets or rely on an external tool to highlight 15 levels of parens and/or auto insert 10 ugly parens at thee end of a nested code block is a nice QOL improvement in my opinion. Development environments with syntax support are common. These are not "external", they are nowadays "integrated". See the features of typical Java IDEs. Java uses tools to edit code, so does Lisp.