Re: Why is lisp so weird?
From: Howard Ding (hading_at_hading.dnsalias.com)
Date: 02/29/04
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Date: Sun, 29 Feb 2004 13:29:14 GMT
mikecoxlinux@yahoo.com (Mike Cox) writes:
> I'm a C++ programmer, and have to use lisp because I want to use
> emacs. I've gotten a book on lisp, and I must say lisp is the ugliest
> looking language syntax wise. What is up with this: (defun(foo()).
> What were the lisp authors thinking? Why did Stallman use lisp in
> emacs so extensively? Why oh why does such a weird and strange
> looking language end up in a major software package so now I have to
> learn it? My mind boggles at the craziness of lisp, and stallman's
> decision to add so much of it to lisp.
>
I mostly use Lisp these days (although Common Lisp for the most part,
since I'm not extending emacs for the most part, but writing code to
do actual tasks). It felt a little funny at first, but now that I'm
used to it, it's uniformity makes other languages feel funny
syntactically. Use an editor that matches parentheses (which you're
already doing if you have emacs), indent code properly (again, emacs
does), and start thinking in terms of parens delimiting forms rather
than as entities on their own, and the syntax will eventually (and
after not too long) disappear, leaving you only to think about the
actual problem you're trying to solve.
-- Howard Ding <hading@hading.dnsalias.com>
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