I was thrilled in the moment when I realized that all of the three parts of this banal form can be an arbitrarily complex forms themselves. For example, you can in place substitute "+" with a long code that contacts a web service and in the end, after 100 lines of code, returns "+". This 100 line function is made of forms made of forms made of forms and each can be replaced by the code that you might need. It's the beauty of the conciseness of the ternary operator in other language (a = b? 1 : 2) taken to a possibly infinite extreme.
This can sometimes be achieved in other languages with the use of temporary variables, one-shot functions if the language doesn't have lambdas (or multi-line lambdas like Python) and in the end litter your soul with the use of "eval"
This also leads to the other wow moment, when using Lisp makes it appear other languages' syntax so inelegant and cumbersome. At its core everything in Lisp is just like this:
(FUNCTION argument1 argument2 …)
When it clicks, it really hits you with the beauty of its perfect mathematical purity and you wonder how can you feel so comfortable with the average C-like language, where for has a syntax that is different from while, switch case is a beast of its own, sometimes you use curly brackets, sometimes square, sometimes regular or even angular, you don't have to forget commas and semicolons, you use colons and dots and question marks and myriads of keywords each with its own syntax and some things are functions and other operators and equal means something different from the double equals and so on.
I like the fact that you can substitute a more complex expression anywhere, even in the first position (the function to be called), but everything looks so similar that it's hard to see what's going on. I read more code than I write (I like to read about programming languages) and this:
((lambda (x y) (+ x y)) 3 4)
looks much harder to read than this:
(function(x, y) return x+y end)(3, 4).
In the Lua version, you can easily skim the code: here is a function (rather than a Greek letter), the parameters are inside parenthesis and separated by commas, the body comes next until the "end" keyword, it produces (returns) a value and then you pass the parameters (inside parenthesis and separated by commas again) to the function that was just created.
In the Scheme version, how am I supposed to know where this lambda ends other than counting parenthesis and having a lot of practice to recognize that (....... thing thing) is a function call where the function is more than a single name?
Similarly this:
(define (fn x)
(lambda (a) (+ a x)))
IMHO looks much harder to read than this:
function fn(x)
return function(a)
return a+x
end
end
The second one is much clearer: "return function", you are returning a closure to the caller. The Scheme one makes me think: a function, another function, parenthesis, an expression, then it ends abruptly and I don't know what the hell the code supposed to do. Again, I CAN read that code in Scheme, but only after learning the core concepts in Lua.
But I'd argue `case` in Lisp does have different syntax from `if`. They are built out of the same primitives, but you have to know how to compose those primitives. It's much like saying all functions are the same, but in reality you need to know the arity, order of parameters, etc before calling a function.
To me, Lisp often felt like if the English language only had commas for punctuation. We then formulated all possible scenarios out of words and commas. Sure it's simple, easy for a computer to parse, etc, but it off loads a lot of work onto us as we read.
I'm also reminded of when I took a typography class in art school. My professor was adament about typography not being "grey". He really wanted us to use weight, contrast, spacing, to create and enforce a hierarchy within our typography which would guide and aid the reader. I'd argue Lisp is completely "grey", while other languages are not.
Don't get me wrong, this thread has been a great read and I've gained new respect from Lisp from it. I'm inspired to give it another go.
(+ 1 2)
I was thrilled in the moment when I realized that all of the three parts of this banal form can be an arbitrarily complex forms themselves. For example, you can in place substitute "+" with a long code that contacts a web service and in the end, after 100 lines of code, returns "+". This 100 line function is made of forms made of forms made of forms and each can be replaced by the code that you might need. It's the beauty of the conciseness of the ternary operator in other language (a = b? 1 : 2) taken to a possibly infinite extreme.
This can sometimes be achieved in other languages with the use of temporary variables, one-shot functions if the language doesn't have lambdas (or multi-line lambdas like Python) and in the end litter your soul with the use of "eval"
This also leads to the other wow moment, when using Lisp makes it appear other languages' syntax so inelegant and cumbersome. At its core everything in Lisp is just like this:
(FUNCTION argument1 argument2 …)
When it clicks, it really hits you with the beauty of its perfect mathematical purity and you wonder how can you feel so comfortable with the average C-like language, where for has a syntax that is different from while, switch case is a beast of its own, sometimes you use curly brackets, sometimes square, sometimes regular or even angular, you don't have to forget commas and semicolons, you use colons and dots and question marks and myriads of keywords each with its own syntax and some things are functions and other operators and equal means something different from the double equals and so on.