In <················@netcom.com>, ······@netcom.com (Will Hartung) wrote:
> ········@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod) writes:
>
> >I think that the syntax of Lisp and Scheme are really a big part of what
> >frightens people off. I can show you some ML code, and it has nice big
> >function declarations, and the if/then/else constructs are familiar,
> >patterns are a little weird-looking, but you expect some weird stuff in
> >any new language. But ML is a functional programming language: it just uses
> >syntax that is closer to mainstream programming languages.
>
> A lot of this is based upon, I believe, first impressions. At a
> glance, Lisp looks so different to someone experienced in a more
> conventional language, they immediately make it more difficult because
> it LOOKs like its more difficult.
>
> ...
It is interesting to note that the Lisp 1.5 Manual introduced two syntaxes,
with what we know no as List introduced as the "Data Language". It is my
understanding (I don't remember where I heard or read it) that the first
Lisp implementations were written in this Data language (after the
interpreter was written) as a convenient bootstrap method. It was only
after this implementation was up that the Lisp people decided that this
Data language had some advantages, mostly that the fact that the code used
the same representation as the data enabled them to write code that dealt
with code (introspection?). Btw, doesn't this demonstrate that Lisp's
notation is "natural" for certain purposes?
Hartmann Schaffer