Re: Very poor Lisp performance

Jon Harrop <usenet@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

> I heard that infix parsers are rarely used not because infix is worse but
> because infix is unusual in Lisp code and increases incompatibility. Would
> you agree with that?

Infix parsers are rarely used for several reasons. The increase in
incompatibility is one reason, but there are others:

Infix macros are *hard*.

You need to learn the prefix notation *anyway* (because code that
operates on code needs to operate at the abstract syntax level,
which in lisp is naturally prefix-notated lists).

Infix only works well on binary operations (consider the
popularity of ternary ? : operator).

>>> 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?
>
> Firstly, do you agree that languages are evolving to be more concise?

No.

> Secondly, do you agree that more concise languages tend to have more
> complicated grammars?

Possibly. They may simply have larger vocabularies.

> Finally, what other reason could drive this association?

Languages drift. And as I mentioned before, bandwidth and error
correction are importand factors.
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Very poor Lisp performance
    ... > I heard that infix parsers are rarely used not because infix is worse but ... >>> natural and programming languages have complicated grammars precisely ... we are better at understanding many short expressions ...
    (comp.lang.lisp)
  • Re: merits of Lisp vs Python
    ... other, infix computer languages, and often find myself misreading ... OCaml examples don't look so bad at all, but Mathematica expressions ... perceived correspondence to spoken languages. ... working with anonymous objects in python can lead to statements like: ...
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  • Re: Why forth is not popular
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