······@cse.ucsc.edu (Eugene Miya) writes on 13 Feb 2003:
> In article <············@bob.news.rcn.net>, <·········@aol.com> wrote:
>>> LISP is very old - almost as old as FORTRAN.
>>
>> From what I heard, the programming thinking involved with
>> it was completely foreign to me. I figured that it took
>> a thinking style that I may not be able to do.
>
> It's merely training.
> It's very several serial; everything is a list denoted
> via ()s which is part of the joke at the SP means Silly Parens.
> Minimal syntax. There is less of a distinction between program
> and data in LISP (i.e., programs or language might be data:
> which may appear confusing). It has a number of advantages for
> handling control like recursion. Rather than have explicit
> syntax loops, there are implicit things about LISP to the student
> which have just have to be picked up, because there were old
> acronyms like CAR (Content of Accumulator Register) which the
> humans programming LISP never got around to refining or renaming
> (LISP 2.0 never really catching on).
http://mind.sourceforge.net/lisp.html -- for artificial intelligence.
>
> It is worth learning in comparison to the many
> more imperative languages, but it is not initially obvious.
> Find a copy of The Little LISPer,
Little LISPer by Daniel P. Friedman, et al (Paperback)
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0023397632
> and more important find a LISPer with the patience
> to work with you. It involves a style of language processing
> which was prevalent in the 50s.
Arthur T. Murray
--
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/theory5.html -- AI4U Theory of Mind;
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/jsaimind.html -- Tutorial "Mind-1.1"
http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/mind4th.html -- Mind.Forth Robot AI;
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595259227/ -- book "AI4U"