Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!snorkelwacker!bloom-beacon!aiai.edinburgh.ac.UK!jeff
From: jeff@aiai.edinburgh.ac.UK (Jeff Dalton)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.scheme
Subject: Re: extension languages can be darn small, yet still powerfull
Message-ID: <5879.9008301913@subnode.aiai.ed.ac.uk>
Date: 30 Aug 90 19:13:28 GMT
Sender: daemon@athena.mit.edu (Mr Background)
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 71

This is about why people hate Lisp.

> lgm@cbnewsc.att.com (lawrence.g.mayka) writes:
> >I have found that those who "hate" Lisp syntax almost invariably have
> >never used a powerful Lisp development environment such as Symbolics
> >Genera, or even Harlequin's LispWorks.  Indeed, the "haters" usually
> >have never used any Lisp system beyond the 1962-vintage Lisp 1.5 that
> >most of us oldsters were introduced to in undergraduate school.

I hope the case for Lisp doesn't depend on such things as the Symbolics
(or even LispWorks).  Many people find the Symbolics quite difficult
to use in its own right; and if Lisp really needs that much env just to
be as good as, for example, C under Unix, I don't think the argument
for Lisp is very strong.

Unfortunately, many people judge Lisp without even using the sort of
environment provided by such things as GNU Emacs.  They have to do
their own indentation and parenthesis matching, which (a) is difficult
and (b) tends to produce less than readable code.  (Many people do not
discover a good indentation style on their own and consequently have
to pay too much attention to parentheses when reading code as well as
when writing it.)

(It doesn't help of course that on machines such as Suns C has
a better environment in many respects than that provided by most
Lisps.  Dbxtool is my usual example.)

I have also found that some people who teach Lisp (and others, of
course) make a point of criticizing its syntax, the names "car" and
"cdr", the lack of strong typing, etc. (all the traditional complaints)
and in general have little understanding of how good Lisp programmers
use the language or of the "ways of thinking" appropriate to it.

This is not just because they are used to Pascal and friends.  The
same people often have nothing but good to say about functional and
logic programming languages (eg, ML and Prolog).  In part it's because
they associate Lisp with hacking, debugging, all those things a proper
methodology is supposed to reduce the need for, and because the "not a
police state" philosophy seems to have produced a language that is
almost antithetical to (what they regard as) the needs of software
engineering (or whatever).

> Many of the lisp-haters that I am thinking of used the Xerox InterLisp
> workstation environment.  What got many people were the structured
> editors.

I couldn't stand DEDIT (or whatever it was called).  Indeed, I'm not
a big fan of structure editors in general.  Lisp is my favorite language
nonetheless.

> >Opinions formed in ignorance carry little weight with me.
> 
> I agree, but many of the lisp-haters I have met have given lisp a
> chance, and found they just didn't like it.  Be careful of assuming
> that lisp-haters have formed their opinions out of ignorance.

Some people do dislike Lisp despite having used some of the
supposedly good Lisp environments.  Generally, there is some
other language (or languages) they would prefer to use instead.
Just as we usually prefer Lisp, I think it is reasonable for
other people to prefer other languages.  Indeed, there are
often good reasons to prefer another language.  We may think
that Lisp is better all things considered, but that is not the
only reasonable conclusion to reach.

And if someone does prefer language X they may be annoyed by a
language Y that doesn't let them express the things they want to
express.  talk of hating Y is often just a way to say they wish
they didn't have to (or hadn't had to) use it.

-- Jeff