Re: Very poor Lisp performance

Joe Marshall wrote:
> Infix parsers are rarely used for several reasons. The increase in
> incompatibility is one reason, but there are others:
>
> Infix macros are *hard*.

Do you mean it is difficult to implement infix in Lisp?

> 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).

So Lisp is rather tied to the built-in prefix notation.

> Infix only works well on binary operations

Yes.

> (consider the popularity of ternary ? : operator).

I used to use that a fair bit. Are you saying it is popular or unpopular?

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

Do you think that syntax is a significant source of errors when programming?
I believe that my errors tend to be at higher levels, e.g. algorithms.

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
http://www.ffconsultancy.com
.

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