> IMO, part of the problem is that lisp doesn't map well to the pseudo-code > that most non-lispers have in their heads.
Well, I consider myself a Lisper (not a good lisper of course =))... My mental pseudo-code, I think, tends to be pretty "lispic" most of the time. And I _have_ used lisp up to the point that prefix syntax, even for arithmetic, is natural when writing my own Lisp code. However I still feel that translating pseudo-code (when implementing a "classic" algorithm from literature) with many for loops, indexes, swapping and assignment, is artificial in Lisp. The resulting code is, at least in my experience, mostly ugly, and seems to be slower than a Lisp native version would be. The following questions arise: Is ugliness bearable in that code? (Maybe? I tend to think that shallow ugliness in code is showing a more profound problem. Still, "ugliness" is a very fuzzy, subjective, concept). Should I take the care to translate the code into a more Lispic version? (It sounds like reinventing the wheel). Is there a programmatic way to translate those algorithms into a Lispic version? (It sounds too difficult). Is pseudo-code from books obsolete for Lisp? (It doesn't seem to me that all those algorithms are obsolete; perhaps, with time, literature will adopt a more lispic style, just as programming languages have). Is Lisp instrinsically a bad language for some kinds of problems? (If I thought that, hey, I wouldn't be here; but the question still arises). Maybe lispic versions of that code should be written by us, gardeners? (Sounds like a possible solution). Any ideas? _______________________________________________ Gardeners mailing list [email protected] http://www.lispniks.com/mailman/listinfo/gardeners
