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Hofstadter on Lisp (1983)

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372 points Eric_WVGG | 1 comments | 16 Oct 24 13:44 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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InDubioProRubio ◴[16 Oct 24 16:25 UTC] No.41860980[source]▶
Lisp aNeeds Braces
replies(3): >>41863741 #>>41866496 #>>41868005 #
NateEag ◴[17 Oct 24 04:48 UTC] No.41866496[source]▶
Here, have another approach to Lisp formatting:

https://readable.sourceforge.io/

I looked into porting it to elisp a while back, but the elisp reader was missing a feature or two sweet-expressions require. I should see if that's still true...

replies(1): >>41867386 #
f1shy ◴[17 Oct 24 07:57 UTC] No.41867386[source]▶
Would be nice. But I think after hours/days of working with lisp, the brain starts to see it at sweet expressions. That is why all tries to go away from s-exp don't get traction: anytime anybody starts doing it, pretty fast discovers it is really not needed.
replies(1): >>41867767 #
1. lproven ◴[17 Oct 24 09:09 UTC] No.41867767{3}[source]▶
I think this is true for the small percentage of people who get through that initial stage -- but it excludes the (I suspect) majority who just bounce off it.

I just bounced off it, and I have tried quite hard, repeatedly.

Idea: for the rest of us who can't simply flip syntax around in our heads, there should be an infix Lisp that tries to preserve some of the power without the weird syntaxless syntax.

There are of course several, of which maybe the longest-lived is Dylan:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dylan_(programming_language)

... but instead of Dylan's Algol- or Pascal-like syntax, do a Dylan 2 with C-style syntax?