On 13/11/2009, Niki Yoshiuchi <aplusbi_AT_gmail.com> wrote:
> I think part of what makes Lisp "elegant" and "clean" is the simplicity of
> its grammar. It has the shortest and simplest grammar of all the major
> programming languages.
In fact a simplier grammar is binary notation, it's only got two
characters and you just build up everything from just those two
characters. Brainf**k also has a really simple grammar.
The thing is that human beings don't really work well with lots of
things that are very similar, we get confused. Human beings prefer
things to be similar enough that we can use our previous knowledge to
figure them out but different enough that they aren't easily confused
with other things.
Unix's 'everything is a file' isn't really true it's more of a guiding
principle than a hard and fast rule and it's more like "everything is
a block or char device" anyway. If you try to shoe-horn everything in
to being a 'file' you end up with some very confusing and unintutitive
behaviour like the OOP crowd and their 'everything is an object'.
Lisp has the 'everything is a list' problem and there is lots of
behaviour that doesn't fit well in to this. Consistancy can make
things intuitive, but you shouldn't sacrifice intuitiveness for
consistancy.
- Jessta
-- ===================== http://jessta.id.auReceived on Thu Nov 12 2009 - 19:16:00 UTC
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