Kindly comments on Checking for the Programming Gear - Less Wrong

5 Post author: MBlume 08 September 2012 08:38PM

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Comment author: fubarobfusco 12 September 2012 06:30:17PM -1 points [-]

People can always find things in surface syntax to object to. Python's whitespace is pretty unpopular with people who think all "normal" languages have to have curly braces — as well as with some folks who grew up with Fortran and think that significant whitespace equals dinosaurity.

The interesting thing about Lisp is not its surface syntax, but the relationship between code and data. The textual syntax of Lisp is a way of expressing data structures; Lisp code is defined in terms of trees, not text. Most languages don't make the syntax tree of the code available to the programmer; it's hidden away as internal data structures within the compiler.

Comment author: Kindly 12 September 2012 06:43:31PM 1 point [-]

True, and that makes it a good language to be familiar with, I'm just not convinced it's a good language to start with.