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Disclaimer: I'm still a total lisp newbie, take all of this with a grain of salt. As I see it, the biggest hurdle to learning LISP isn't the syntax per se. L

Disclaimer: I'm still a total lisp newbie, take all of this with a grain of salt. As I see it, the biggest hurdle to learning LISP isn't the syntax per se. Lisp's syntax is so simple, it's easily learned in a matter of minutes. The whole language basically boils down to lists and dotted pairs, and lists can be boiled down to dotted pairs if you squint at them the right way. The real obstacle for newcomers is that you have to completely rewire your brain. The vast majority of us were taught programming with BASIC, C, Java, or something similar. With those languages, programming is like following a recipe. Do step a, then do step b, etc. Moreover, imperative languages use a familiar "verb" and "noun" paradigm. That's natural and intuitive to most of us. With lisp, everything gets turned on its head. Everything happens at once. Code is data. There's no syntactic sugar because there's no syntax. You have to completely relearn how to look at computers and programming, and start over as a child. It's incredibly rewarding once you start having those "aha!" moments, but there is a decent-sized conceptual hurdle for people that are used to procedural programming languages. It seems that the majority of the lisp community suffers from the curse of knowledge. For experienced lisp people, lisp is so natural and intuitive that it's hard to understand why other people have such trouble with it. The OP is correct, lisp could really use more resources to bridge the gap between lispers and the outside world.

viraptor 17y ago
I see it a bit differently. I had to learn enough lisp to port some small application I needed to python. The result is basically this: I don't have any problem learning the syntax - I didn't have anything against ml-s, haskell and others either, even though I started with pascal. But what do I gain by using lisp seriously? I can do easy prototyping in python; safe, functional code in haskell; serious multiprocessing in erlang; fast tight-loops in c; nice oo in either python, c# or java, etc. etc. Why exactly should I spend more time with lisp? What does it help me achieve? Python right now is basically lisp + community from what I can see. Sytax doesn't even matter that much. If I need to rewire my brain to feel natural with a language that doesn't give me any new possibilities... then what's the point? I need those wires to understand haskell, sorry ;) I just need some balance - I can change the way I write my code, but tell me what do I get in exchange... and then tell me how is it better than doing the same in any other language.
- anamax 17y ago
  Lisp macros make it possible to DSLs that make sense. The syntax also helps with code generation.
- geocar 17y ago
  > I can do easy prototyping in python; safe, functional code in haskell; serious multiprocessing in erlang; fast tight-loops in c; nice oo in either python, c# or java, etc. etc. Why exactly should I spend more time with lisp? Because I can do easy prototyping in lisp; safe, functional code in lisp; serious multiprocessing in lisp; fast tight-loops in c; nice oo in either lisp, lisp or lisp. If you find a problem that needs a new paradigm, you either need a new language, or you need lisp. > Python right now is basically lisp + community from what I can see. Python is a great language. It supports a lot of the most useful and powerful paradigms that lispers use, so many lispers like it and use it. But python is not "basically lisp", simply because it lacks the property I mentioned earlier.
  - viraptor 17y ago
    By "safe" I meant "static type-safe" - sorry for the confusion. And no - can't do that in lisp. What do you mean by serious multiprocessing in lisp? Does it have a distributed database included? Or a node registration and message passing framework? Or a process control framework? Can it run my 10000 processes? Does it have portable networking and thread implementation where nothing ever blocks... Or did you mean that I can have for example the sbcl threading http://www.sbcl.org/manual/Threading.html http://www.sbcl.org/manual/Threading.html and can build all of that on my own? I could do the same in c... but I won't - erlang is better for that. I'd also argue with "nice oo in lisp"... for some values of "nice" :) For big projects I want a code browser / ide. I want types in my OO. I want the code to be structured in a way that makes the methods belong to classes. I don't want old-style message passing OO (not saying that it's bad... it's just not what is used these days in big projects). I want new-style enterprise-level OO with interfaces and self-commenting code where you write what you want to do, because every single person in your 100-person team has to understand it without any comments when you're not around. So everything that's left imho is easy prototyping. We can shoehorn every paradigm into any language - sure. But then you get something that can do everything and isn't good for anything in particular. If I learned lisp before python, I'd probably say the same thing about python... it's just not worth the additional attention, because they're both easy-prototyping languages, where you can promote the code into production when your first design is "good enough".

viraptor 17y ago

I see it a bit differently. I had to learn enough lisp to port some small application I needed to python. The result is basically this: I don't have any problem learning the syntax - I didn't have anything against ml-s, haskell and others either, even though I started with pascal. But what do I gain by using lisp seriously? I can do easy prototyping in python; safe, functional code in haskell; serious multiprocessing in erlang; fast tight-loops in c; nice oo in either python, c# or java, etc. etc. Why exactly should I spend more time with lisp? What does it help me achieve? Python right now is basically lisp + community from what I can see. Sytax doesn't even matter that much. If I need to rewire my brain to feel natural with a language that doesn't give me any new possibilities... then what's the point? I need those wires to understand haskell, sorry ;) I just need some balance - I can change the way I write my code, but tell me what do I get in exchange... and then tell me how is it better than doing the same in any other language.

anamax 17y ago
Lisp macros make it possible to DSLs that make sense. The syntax also helps with code generation.
geocar 17y ago
> I can do easy prototyping in python; safe, functional code in haskell; serious multiprocessing in erlang; fast tight-loops in c; nice oo in either python, c# or java, etc. etc. Why exactly should I spend more time with lisp? Because I can do easy prototyping in lisp; safe, functional code in lisp; serious multiprocessing in lisp; fast tight-loops in c; nice oo in either lisp, lisp or lisp. If you find a problem that needs a new paradigm, you either need a new language, or you need lisp. > Python right now is basically lisp + community from what I can see. Python is a great language. It supports a lot of the most useful and powerful paradigms that lispers use, so many lispers like it and use it. But python is not "basically lisp", simply because it lacks the property I mentioned earlier.
- viraptor 17y ago
  By "safe" I meant "static type-safe" - sorry for the confusion. And no - can't do that in lisp. What do you mean by serious multiprocessing in lisp? Does it have a distributed database included? Or a node registration and message passing framework? Or a process control framework? Can it run my 10000 processes? Does it have portable networking and thread implementation where nothing ever blocks... Or did you mean that I can have for example the sbcl threading http://www.sbcl.org/manual/Threading.html http://www.sbcl.org/manual/Threading.html and can build all of that on my own? I could do the same in c... but I won't - erlang is better for that. I'd also argue with "nice oo in lisp"... for some values of "nice" :) For big projects I want a code browser / ide. I want types in my OO. I want the code to be structured in a way that makes the methods belong to classes. I don't want old-style message passing OO (not saying that it's bad... it's just not what is used these days in big projects). I want new-style enterprise-level OO with interfaces and self-commenting code where you write what you want to do, because every single person in your 100-person team has to understand it without any comments when you're not around. So everything that's left imho is easy prototyping. We can shoehorn every paradigm into any language - sure. But then you get something that can do everything and isn't good for anything in particular. If I learned lisp before python, I'd probably say the same thing about python... it's just not worth the additional attention, because they're both easy-prototyping languages, where you can promote the code into production when your first design is "good enough".