Comment by enbugger
4 hours ago
If only Lisp had better presense in modern code editors. Emacs is not enough, especially on Windows where it is super slow. I think this is what actually stops newcomers to start with Lisp and not Python
4 hours ago
If only Lisp had better presense in modern code editors. Emacs is not enough, especially on Windows where it is super slow. I think this is what actually stops newcomers to start with Lisp and not Python
My crackpot theory is that what stops newcomers is how unergonomic "(" and ")" are to type on typical keyboards. If mainstream lisp dialects used square brackets instead, we'd all be programming in it!
> I think this is what actually stops newcomers to start with Lisp and not Python
What stops newcomers is knee-jerk reactions about the (lack of) syntax, it's scary to see something that doesn't look like Algol, because everyone who does mainstream programming uses Algol-like languages.
Introduce lisp to anyone who knows programming since earlier, and 99% of them will have a adverse reaction to s-expressions, before they understand what's going on. Once they understand, it makes a lot of sense obviously, but not everyone even has that kind of open mindset where they could understand if they wanted to.
I find lisp to be a very non ergonomic language and am happy that python is the default.
Can you quantify that?
Let's just say that the weights of opening and closing parentheses do not cancel out.
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