Re: How Lisp's Nested Notation Limits The Language's Utility



On May 7, 3:34 pm, Jon Harrop <j...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Joe Marshall wrote:
Joe Marshall wrote:
If the syntax is a problem, why haven't any alternative syntaxes taken
over for s-expressions?

I ask why alternative lisp syntaxes never took off,

You asked why "alternative syntaxes never took off". Nothing Lisp specific
so I cited several non-Lisp examples.

Huh? This thread is called ``How Lisp's Nested Notation Limits The
Language's Utility Options''. I embedded a paragraph from Xah which
starts ``There is a common complain by programers about lisp's
notation, of nested parenthesis, being unnatural or difficult to
read.'' I then mentioned M-expressions (the original Lisp syntax),
CGOL (an alternative Lisp syntax), Dylan (a language with a strong
lisp heritage that abandoned the s-expression syntax), and Curl (a
language with a strong lisp heritage that replaced parens by curly
braces). Most people know I'm a lisp hacker, too.

What on earth did you think I was talking about?!

If you want a Lisp specific example then I'd say why did closures not take
off in BASIC? I think the answer is that BASIC programmers who wanted
something more learned a better tool...

Am I missing something here? What does BASIC have to do with Lisp?

What are you smoking, dude?


.



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