Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!know!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!rpi!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!apple!agate!shelby!neon!neon!gumby From: gumby@Cygnus.COM (David Vinayak Wallace) Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp Subject: Virtues(?) of Lisp syntax Message-ID: Date: 17 Sep 90 23:48:59 GMT References: <3368@skye.ed.ac.uk> <1350030@otter.hpl.hp.com> <3408@skye.ed.ac.uk> <3450@syma.sussex.ac.uk> <3427@skye.ed.ac.uk> <3465@syma.sussex.ac.uk> Sender: news@Neon.Stanford.EDU (USENET News System) Organization: Cygnus Support Lines: 10 In-Reply-To: aarons@syma.sussex.ac.uk's message of 16 Sep 90 12:58:54 GMT Why is it good to make a distinction between "syntax words" and "function names?" Sure you need to understand the semantics of QUOTE before you use it, but then again you need to understand the semantics of PLUS (as has been ably pointed out) before you use it, too. Personally, the thing that drives me up the wall about non-lispy languages like C is the artificial distinction between "expressions" and "statements." Apart from making it harder for me to think about my code, they don't let me tell my compiler various things it ought to know (by, for instance, requiring that I make lots of assignments).