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Marvin Minsky - The Beauty of the Lisp Language

39 2020-10-06 18:38

Lisp is flexible because its more limited in scope, iirc
only 7-10 primitive functions that are designed to easily
interoperate with each other like lego blocks are sufficient to
implement LISP. Its probably neat to see computing encapsulated in
these lego blocks, but its harder to understand how limiting
this approach is and how much resources are lost when these lego
blocks are stacked vs "unelegant" but straightforward imperative code. Plus the syntax of LISP is fairly unpleasant to read,
its "raw ast representation" is not something i'd consider human readable without training, unlike C-syntax which looks natural and intuitive. By time a LISPer writes his complex lego block tower,
a C programmer would write x10-x20 the code because the code flow
will be natural like writing prose, LISP reads like formula expressions with huge parens levels stacks.
What real problems LISP does better than C?
I can only imagine something exotic and LISP-centric that no libraries exists for
so a half-baked prototype written by LISPers is considered the only
thing available, while if it was actually useful a C/C++ library
would exist as a complete polished solution with an API,
there will be no need to implement entire LISP or follow the
syntax scheme.

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