On Friday, February 06, 2026 11:21:48 AM John Hasler wrote: > rhkramer writes: ... > > is there somewhere a guide to LISP syntax that makes analogies to > > things like Algol or C > > Lisp is too different for that to make sense.
Ahh, but I did find one thing that helped me make sense / make an analogy -- at least for some things (I posted a source in another post), Lisp seems to use a prefix syntax (e.g., (+ x y) as opposed to most other languages which use infix syntax (x + y). (And, there are other languages (or calculators) that use a postfix syntax (x y +). That little bit makes me feel a lot more comfortable with Lisp (and presumably Emacs). And, yes, I'm sure it is true that you don't have to know Lisp to use Emacs, but I expect I'll have to do a fair amount of customization, which probably means Lisp.
