3 ms·

Is Lisp a write-only language?

• adwf 12y ago
  I'll assume this is an honest question - not a troll (and hence don't deserve the downvotes), but no, Lisp isn't write-only. It's an immensely flexible language that lets you code in a variety of different styles, so you can end up with code spaghetti. But that doesn't mean that you have to, or even that it's the most likely thing to happen. If you compare it to idiomatic Perl, where a lot of the community seem to get obsessed with the famous one-liners, Lisp seems a lot better to me. And if you follow a decent style guide like: https://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/lispguide.xml https://google-styleguide.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/lispguide... Then there's no particular reason why you should end up with disaster code anymore than in any another language. I'd rather read a single page of Lisp, than the equivalent numerous pages of Java or some other verbose language.
• aerique 12y ago
  Coming from Common Lisp and having tried out Haskell recently I can ask the same about the latter while I find Lisp to be one of the most readable languages out there. It's basically what you're used to and for Lisp it does not take long to get used to.
• wnewman 12y ago
  The old book _Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp_ contains a number of nontrivial programs (like an Othello player and a little symbolic math program). AFAIK, most people think the code is unusually clear, both a good example of how to write clear CL programs and a good example of clear programming period (independent of language). If you are seriously interested in clarity of CL programs, I recommend taking a look at that book.