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best book: aint no such thing, and encouragement for old coots

Michele Simionato michele.simionato at poste.it
Tue Jan 20 02:55:11 EST 2004 
cartermark46 at ukmail.com (Mark Carter) wrote in message news:<d3c9c04.0401190851.5a2f006b at posting.google.com>...
> I suppose that Schemers and Lispers take the attitude that a lack of
> syntax is an advantage, because you can ultimately program in any
> paradigm you wish. It's "just" a case of writing code that implements
> the paradigm. 

Uh? The lack of syntax has nothing to do with the lack of paradigm,
I miss you point, sorry.

> I have also heard claims that the existence of
> parantheses in s-exprs is a red herring as far as readability is
> concerned.

That's true, the parentheses are a not a problem for readability, they
are a problem for *writability*: in practice, they force you to use emacs
or The Other Editor. Somebody can argue that this is a Good Thing,
anyway ;) So, it is somewhat true that Lisp/Scheme are difficult to 
read, but this is due to the choice of names and to the unusual order 
of evaluation more than to the parentheses. Just my 2 eurocents,

   Michele Simionato
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