| >Why do people who write or talk about Lisp always have to start with something like this? Well, the people who write or talk about Lisp generally probably think it's true, and it's the sort of thing that, if true, makes for a fantastic selling point. >you can add/remove 'language features' as you want, and the syntax is really simple, and code is data I think this is the meat of it: that Lisp offers an exceptionally low barrier to entry to the world of, let's say, "experimental programming." It lets you do things you would never dream of if you've only ever mucked around in something like C or Java. Whether or not those things are actually useful in and of themselves, it's fun and rewarding to experiment not just with programs, but the way you write and even think about them. Of course, there are people who will tell you that Lisp is also good for solid technical reasons, but I think this is the main appeal of Lisp to most people who describe it as "awesome." >Everyone tries to read programming languages as close as possible to plain english in their head That's simply not true. You may do this, and it's a perfectly valid approach, but not everyone thinks that way. Personally, I think of code in terms of what it "does," rather than what it "says," if that makes any sense— it's difficult to explain. As for readability, I firmly believe it ultimately comes down to familiarity. Yes, infix syntax is easier to read for a limited subset of small, operator-dense arithmetic expressions, but I find that kind of code is relatively rare. Broadly speaking, you're going to get most of your structural information about Lisp code from the indentation; the parentheses eventually fade into noise. And honestly, the same is true of just about every other programming language. |