More than anything else, that paragraph is what kept me coming back when I first started learning to program and struggled mightily. I lugged that huge book around in my book bag for months, trying and failing to fully grok one of the earlier chapters, until I found a professor who was willing to help me with it. Ultimately we (the professor and I) were able to do a one semester independent study focusing on the material from SICP.

I used to read and re-read that paragraph. I read it aloud to my parents and to girlfriends, trying to find somebody to share my awe.

<3

Sometimes it is hard to find others who share an appreciation of the beauty of mathemtics or computing. People look at me funny when I say programming is every bit as much an art as writing a poem. Almost any human activity can be an art.

> writing a poem

On that analogy, Lisp is like French. Other languages are like German.

(And before you downvote me please note: I am a native German speaker.)

Les mathématiciens sont comme les Français: quoiqu'on leur dise, ils le traduisent dans leur propre langue, et cela devient alors quelque chose de complètement différent. — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

That's funny because I am a native French speaker and I find German to be a very pleasing language to speak out loud. The sonorities are oddly satisfying to me.

Please note that I am nowhere near fluent in German. It just feels great, especially the way words can agglutinate to form comically long words, while still transporting meaning.

I don't dispute any of that. But French is still a better language for writing poetry (IMHO).

I see. I kinda mixed up poetry and beauty.

Incorrect; a computational process is made of matter/energy.

It has an conceptual interpretation of what it's doing; what it represents. That is what is intangible.