17 Jun
2006
17 Jun
'06
6:37 p.m.
Steve Harris:
Hum. It's maybe not tactfuly expressed, but the
s-expression syntax has a
number of objectors with informed positions.
It is near one end of a broad spectrum of languages so inevitably not to
everyones taste.
Sure. Syntax can be more compact without s-expressions, and the syntax can
also be more formed towards specific purposes without s-expressions as
well, like smalltalk that use {...} instead of (lambda ()...), and C that
use {...} instead of (begin ...), and things like accessing array values
or setting values requires more characters with s-expression since you
can't use special characters for common tasks. But the fact that you have
complete control over the language in a way that a non-lisper is probably
not able to understand without ever using lisp macros weights up for all
those things.
However, when people normally bash lisp, its probably because of the
following reason:
All the paranthesis looks ugly and are confusing.
For example, I actually spent almost two years programming lisp before I
started to like lisp very much. The paranthesis confusion dissapeared
quickly, but thinking lispish was harder. Before that, I thought python
was the most beautiful language of them all. (I knew about 20 programming
languages at that time.)