(Lots of ((Irritating, Spurious) (Parentheses)))

http://fare.livejournal.com/77842.html

by gnosis • 16 years ago

17 15 16 years ago

fare.livejournal.com

jarin• 16 years ago

This is a long article that can be completely summed up by the headline (it's a rant about people who criticize Lisp's syntax).

noamsml• 16 years ago

I know this is probably said pretty often, but there's nothing stopping you from creating a new syntax for Lisp so long as it can easily be translated into the abstract form of S-Expression. That's what M-Expressions (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M-expression) tried to do.

Zak3• 16 years ago

Somebody tries making an alternate syntax every few years. Usually, it's an experienced Lisper who wants to increase the popularity of Lisp. These never catch on, and never will.

I think there are two problems. First, people who are prone to "get" Lisp are open-minded enough not to be put off by the syntax. People who can't get past the syntax won't grasp the other advantages.

Second, homoiconicity is Lisp's last remaining real advantage[0] over other dynamic languages. Most Lisps are faster than Python or Ruby, but not Lua, especially LuaJIT. An alternate syntax makes that advantage harder to access.

[0] I'm pretty sure CLOS and the condition system could be replicated in Lua, though I'm not sure anybody has.

psykotic2• 16 years ago

> These never catch on, and never will.

Though I'm no great fan of Mr. Wolfram, I would have to say Mathematica has caught on quite well. Mathematica isn't a Lisp (its semantics are based on term rewriting) but it freely intermixes S-expressions and M-expressions. For example, the M-expression a + b parses into the S-expression Plus[a, b].

draegtun• 16 years ago

I'm pretty sure CLOS and the condition system could be replicated in Lua, though I'm not sure anybody has

re: CLOS - There have at least been two projects to replicate Perl's Moose (http://moose.perl.org) in Lua:

* http://lua-coat.luaforge.net/

* http://code.google.com/p/loose/

rwl• 16 years ago

> These never catch on, and never will.

Another possible counterexample is Logo, though perhaps you didn't mean "Lispy languages with fewer parentheses will never catch on," but "Front-ends for Common Lisp that use fewer parentheses will never catch on." I can't speak to the latter.

The folks who make Racket have also implemented a variety of non-Lisp languages (e.g., Scribble, Algol[1]) that I believe are parsed to s-expressions and then compiled by Racket. Not sure how many people use these implementations for "serious" programming, but they're there.

[1] http://docs.racket-lang.org/algol60/index.html

p4bl02• 16 years ago

In fact M-exp where intended for Lisp code before S-exp (which were originally meant to represent data only). IIRC, the story is data S-exp were used for code temporarily because it was easier this way, and then they find it usable enough.

sz• 16 years ago

Why are people still talking about this?

It's like complaining that a Lamborghini sucks because the cupholders are hard to reach. I'm sure it would bother some people, but it's not really worth discussing, is it?

tomh-• 16 years ago

Note that the article is from 2005. Also comparing a lamborghini cup holder with syntax of a programming language doesn't make sense at all. The syntax of a language is something you look at and work with for maybe 8 hours a day and is the key part in communicating the language with the compiler and your coworkers.

The reason I, and I guess many other people don't like the lisp syntax is pure taste and psychological. I don't really care about a list of technical arguments why it is good. I don't like reading or writing the syntax lisp is written in and that will not change. That has nothing to do with being openminded or possible technical superiority over C style syntax. Writing and reading source code is far more enjoyable using other syntaxes solving the exact same problems so why should I bother with lisp?

PS: Who on earth would drink coffee in his fancy lamborginhi :D

p4bl02• 16 years ago

> Why are people still talking about this?

The post is from 2005 ;-).

nkohari• 16 years ago

It's actually more like saying a Lamborghini sucks because the steering wheel is square. It's a very basic feature of the language, and not one that you can avoid using.

robinduckett• 16 years ago

var tldr = "Lots of irritating, spurious text from a Lisp advocate";

(Lots of ((Irritating, Spurious) (Parentheses)))

Related Stories