Path: utzoo!yunexus!ists!mike
From: mike@ists.ists.ca (Mike Clarkson)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Re: Code as data (replies to comments).
Message-ID: <111@ists.ists.ca>
Date: 14 Jun 89 00:53:05 GMT
Article-I.D.: ists.111
References: <1057@syma.sussex.ac.uk> <1350020@otter.hpl.hp.com>
Reply-To: mike@ists.ists.ca (Mike Clarkson)
Organization: Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science
Lines: 45

In article <1350020@otter.hpl.hp.com> sfk@otter.hpl.hp.com (Stephen Knight) writes:
>As far as I am concerned, any language which makes me write
>    (+ x (* y z))
>has made a rather dubious compromise.  None of the respondents to the
>original posting could find any fault with the syntax!  Outside the Lisp
>community, the syntax is widely considered to be a laughing matter. 

Let them laugh.  Most lisp programmers user Emacs, and consider the
parentheses in properly indented Lisp code to be a valuable debugging tool.

>Another example would be the overloading of #.  Why have #'(lambda ...) at 
>all?  Surely having (lambda ...) denote a function is a perfectly simple
>concept that fits well with the idea of a parse tree, and so on.

This is strictly a Common Lisp problem.  Scheme has first class functions.

>Why denote true and false by #T and #F?  Why bother to denote them at all?
>One could simply use variables "true", "false", and "nil".  Why clutter up
>the syntax so pointlessly?  

#T and #F are reader syntax, and are very difficult to shadow or change
in most lisps.  true false and nil are usually normal variables that
can be rebound or lexically shadowed, at which point all hell can break loose.
In addition, using reader syntax for such basic primitives as #T and #F
means the reader can insert the most efficient syntax for then, usually
saving the overhead of a variable lookup.

> Lisp's syntax
>remains an anachronism that inhibits the acceptance of the language in 
>many contexts where its superior expressive power would be appropriate.

Lisp has survived very well over the years.  I doubt that Lisp will ever
become widely accepted, but for reasons much deeper than the syntax. I'm
not sure that this is a bug; personally I consider it a feature!


Mike.



-- 
Mike Clarkson					mike@ists.ists.ca
Institute for Space and Terrestrial Science	uunet!attcan!ists!mike
York University, North York, Ontario,		FORTRAN - just say no. 
CANADA M3J 1P3					+1 (416) 736-5611