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Why don't people like lisp?

Kenny Tilton ktilton at nyc.rr.com
Sun Oct 19 12:33:05 EDT 2003 
Terry Reedy wrote:
> Lisp-aware editors do not solve the problem of reading Lisp code
> embedded in text, as with OnLisp formatted .ps or .pdf.

I agree. A big wadge of Lisp is not readable like NL text. And having 
seen Graham's MOSTN posted here, wow, that is really verbose lisp. With 
any Lisp, the indentation increment is just a few characters. I think 
one can extend that in many editors, but then the structured nature of 
functional code has one sailing off the right margin before too long.

As for reading code, I do not do that in books much, and when I do they 
are pretty short examples. When they get bigger, right, I slow down and 
destructure mentally. For example, in MOSTN I saw the earliest few lines 
were just handling the edge case of a null input list. I moved a couple 
of levels into the tree and forgot that outer check (which was 
unnecessary!).

I was recommending Chapter's 1 & 8 for well-written thoughts on the 
macro issue.

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