Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp,comp.lang.scheme
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!rochester!cornellcs!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!newstand.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.bc.net!torn!kwon!watserv3.uwaterloo.ca!undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca!not-for-mail
From: papresco@csclub.uwaterloo.ca (Paul Prescod)
Subject: Re: Why lisp failed in the marketplace
Sender: news@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca (news spool owner)
Message-ID: <E5txoy.n6E@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 03:00:34 GMT
X-Newsposter: Pnews 4.0-test50 (13 Dec 96)
References: <01bc13dc$cfaa2b20$0f02000a@gjchome.nis.newscorp.com> <330512CF.6458@acm.org> <3305C84E.7EF0@widomaker.com> <vfr750E5o4tx.G8y@netcom.com>
Nntp-Posting-Host: calum.csclub.uwaterloo.ca
Organization: University of Waterloo Computer Science Club
Lines: 27
Xref: glinda.oz.cs.cmu.edu comp.lang.lisp:25514 comp.lang.scheme:18722

In article <vfr750E5o4tx.G8y@netcom.com>,
Will Hartung <vfr750@netcom.com> wrote:
>From this kind of background, from this kind of knowledge base, Lisp
>and Scheme are almost unapproachable casually. I don't know Ada, but I
>am pretty confident I could get the gist of an algorithm written in
>Ada. Heck, even the details. Without ever seeing Ada except maybe in a
>magazine article. 

I think that the syntax of Lisp and Scheme are really a big part of what
frightens people off. I can show you some ML code, and it has nice big
function declarations, and the if/then/else constructs are familiar,
patterns are a little weird-looking, but you expect some weird stuff in
any new language. But ML is a functional programming language: it just uses
syntax that is closer to mainstream programming languages.

But until you pick up a Lisp or Scheme book it really does look like Greek:
car, cdr, lambda, "if" with no visually obvious else or then.  I'm not
sure what to do about that at this point. Does it make sense to define the
semantics of a programming language and its syntax separately, so we could
have an alternate Scheme encoding that looked like ML without the patterns or
Dylan?

It really seems like a waste to invent a whole new programming language to
make Scheme's and Lisp's syntaxes more approachable for Joe Programmer.

 Paul Prescod

