Re: Very poor Lisp performance

Jon Harrop wrote:
> Additionally (pun intended), we were all taught operator precedences in
> conventional mathematics at a very young age. It seems at best odd and at
> worst stupid to disregard this.

I hope there's little disregarding or idiocy going on. Many Lisp users
use other languages regularly, so it's understandably hard for Lisp's
unusual syntax to be lost on them.

I recall that early programming languages were designed to save money
(increase programmer supply) by opening the door to less skilled
programmers. A natural way to attempt this is by offering them an
interface similar to what they've already encountered in school. Like
highschool math notation, for instance.

But what happens when we stray from highschool textbook Fibonacci
implementations? Some languages look great for solving Tower of Hanoi,
but not so enviable in other domains. This is why people look towards
"domain specific languages," and Lisp creeps into the conversation.

Now despite all this, Lisp DOES respect other traditions. Observe LOOP,
which is like every for(;;) loop in every language rolled into one.
Dirty and rewarding, the sort of thing which probably makes Haskellers
and MLers scream indignantly. Also, there are infix parsers and whatnot
floating around the net, for when conventional syntax is appropriate.


> > It seems likely to me that languages that require complex parsers are
> > harder for humans to understand as well.
>
> There is unquestionably a huge amount of evidence to the contrary. Most
> natural and programming languages have complicated grammars precisely
> because it simplifies their use and makes them easier to understand.

Would you please point us to evidence in this direction?


Jon Harrop wrote:
> Joe Marshall wrote:
> > Is readability simply a subjective measure, then? If so, and if
> > maintainability is about how easily a human can parse it, then
> > maintainability is also a subjective measure (and not particularly
> > interesting for comparing computer languages).
>
> Yes. Readability and maintainability are inherently subjective. However,
> they are both very important when comparing computer languages.

Writing honest language vs. language benchmarks is notoriously full of
landmines. Comparing readability sounds like its own Iraq.

Lisp is different, there's no question about that. It may be outflanked
in specific areas; and today's Common Lisp is simply one little
milestone in its evolution. Once, it was believed that an M-expression
syntax would replace the current S-expressions, but many liked sexps.
In the future, and given enough funding, we can wishfully predict human
interface improvements where IDEs project Lisp code in some
conventional way to the user, just as webpages don't look like HTML
markup.

Or perhaps sexps lead the way to a more sensible syntax than the weaker
one which mathematicians developed. Many claim that Newton's calculus
notation is less flexible than Leibniz's, and no doubt various number
systems have varying disadvantages. Perhaps Fermat's margin wouldn't
have been a problem if he had Lisp macros.


Tayssir

.

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