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People are not scared of lisp syntax. They just don't recognise it. First impressions really count. If somebody doesn't even recognise something at first glance
by discreteevent 13y ago
People are not scared of lisp syntax. They just don't recognise it. First impressions really count. If somebody doesn't even recognise something at first glance then the vast majority of then aren't going to engage with it further. The people who are left are not enough to make something popular. Why don't they recognise it? - Because it's not familiar. Every child learns mathematics in school. In mathematics the convention is f(x) = 2x + 1. The function name is outside the brackets and the parameters are within. Names are important and names of things generally tend to be on the outside. Think about the name of a restaurant, a town, a house, a car manufacturer's badge, a box of cornflakes, filing cabinet drawers, folders in the filing cabinet etc. etc. All of these names or labels are on the outside of the object. Most people aren't afraid of lisp syntax they just don't even recognise it enough to engage with it further.
- klibertp 13y agoSomehow XML became popular despite being syntactically very close to sexps... Why do you think XML succeeded where sexps failed?
- segmondy 13y agoXML was all about encoding data, not computations. It's far easier to understand data storage than computation. Lisp becomes scary once you start computing and having functional/recursive calls. Look at prolog. Prolog's data storage is very easy for anyone to grasp. dog(fido). man(john), man(dave). The moment, you start computing with prolog recursively, most folks throw up and are ready to stick to their procedural/imperative style.
- pseudotrue 13y agoHow often do most people write XML?
- dragonwriter 13y ago> Why do you think XML succeeded where sexps failed? Because it was superficially confortable given HTML and its popularity due to the explosion of the web. Cosmetics are often more important than substantive structure in popularity.
- segmondy 13y agoPeople are overwhelmed by lisp syntax, because they see all the ((()) () ()) Instead of seeing the structure.
- KingMob 13y agoClojure: Lisp could use more [] and {}
- jayvanguard 13y agoSyntax helps readability of structure. Lisp fails at this compared to other languages. Its simple, consistent syntax does help with some types of problems but those aren't the ones that dominate most people's daily programming needs.