On Jan 22, 2008 1:57 PM, Tracy R Reed <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > As I learn Scheme I can't help thinking that it is more "fundamental" > > than other languages....that Scheme is what other languages would > > look like if we stripped out all the fluff and syntactic sugar. > > That is exactly what it is. When you program in Lisp you are writing the > abstract syntax tree yourself instead of letting the parser in the > compiler produce it for you.
An important thing to realize here is that Lisp (LISt Processing) was developed as a way to express mathematical operations, NOT as a programming language. The fact that interpreters can be used to evaluate those expressions on a computer is largely incidental (which explains why there are so many sub-languages and interpreter implementations out there). -- Brad Beyenhof http://augmentedfourth.com Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right. ~ Igor Stravinsky -- [email protected] http://www.kernel-panic.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/kplug-lpsg
