New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: How do you “get” Lisp?
Ask HN: How do you “get” Lisp?
2 by khaledh | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Over the years I've read countless articles and comments praising Lisp. Yet, there's something that keeps pushing me away from it every time I try to give it a chance. Maybe it's the nested prefix syntax, all those parentheses, something else? I read most of SICP, and believe me I like the concepts the book puts forward. But I still don't get Lisp. I understand some of the merits: code as data, functional, minimal uniform syntax (s-expressions), macros (meta-programming), etc. But I fail to _appreciate_ those features in the same way I appreciate features in other languages. For example, I can instantly appreciate Elixir's pattern matching capability because it makes control flow fades into the background (in addition to simultaneously destructuring variables), removing a lot of noise; I can appreciate its pipe operator because it makes data flow fades into the background as well, letting me focus on logic composition. What's the best way to develop an appreciation of Lisp, given that I learn best through examples that clearly demonstrate somethings's value, not by reading a laundry list of features?
2 by khaledh | 0 comments on Hacker News.
Over the years I've read countless articles and comments praising Lisp. Yet, there's something that keeps pushing me away from it every time I try to give it a chance. Maybe it's the nested prefix syntax, all those parentheses, something else? I read most of SICP, and believe me I like the concepts the book puts forward. But I still don't get Lisp. I understand some of the merits: code as data, functional, minimal uniform syntax (s-expressions), macros (meta-programming), etc. But I fail to _appreciate_ those features in the same way I appreciate features in other languages. For example, I can instantly appreciate Elixir's pattern matching capability because it makes control flow fades into the background (in addition to simultaneously destructuring variables), removing a lot of noise; I can appreciate its pipe operator because it makes data flow fades into the background as well, letting me focus on logic composition. What's the best way to develop an appreciation of Lisp, given that I learn best through examples that clearly demonstrate somethings's value, not by reading a laundry list of features?
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