Steve Harris:
Hum. It's maybe not tactfuly expressed, but the s-expression syntax has a
number of objectors with informed positions.

It is near one end of a broad spectrum of languages so inevitably not to
everyones taste.

Sure. Syntax can be more compact without s-expressions, and the syntax can also be more formed towards specific purposes without s-expressions as well, like smalltalk that use {...} instead of (lambda ()...), and C that use {...} instead of (begin ...), and things like accessing array values or setting values requires more characters with s-expression since you can't use special characters for common tasks. But the fact that you have complete control over the language in a way that a non-lisper is probably not able to understand without ever using lisp macros weights up for all those things.

However, when people normally bash lisp, its probably because of the following reason:
All the paranthesis looks ugly and are confusing.

For example, I actually spent almost two years programming lisp before I started to like lisp very much. The paranthesis confusion dissapeared quickly, but thinking lispish was harder. Before that, I thought python was the most beautiful language of them all. (I knew about 20 programming languages at that time.)


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