Re:An Intuition for Lisp Syntax
by capableweb on Monday October 26, 2020 @07:19AM
(#24894907)
No, that is not my argument. I'm sorry if I didn't explain myself well enough for everyone to understand.
My point is that "readability" is composed by many factors, not just one. What is "readable" to some will not be "readable" by others. It depends.
For someone who knows Fortran, learning a Fortran-like language is easy (like C or JS). For someone who knows Common Lisp, Clojure is easy. But for someone who knows Fortran, Clojure is less familiar, hence the code will, on a glance, look less "readable".
The other factor is if something is "simple" by itself.
Most of this view comes from Rich Hickey, who wrote Clojure. He discusses "readability" or "simplicity" rather, in his talk "Simple Made Easy". If you haven't seen it before, do yourself a favor and watch it: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/
He'll explain it much better, and with further points, much better than I ever can.
My point is that "readability" is composed by many factors, not just one. What is "readable" to some will not be "readable" by others. It depends.
For someone who knows Fortran, learning a Fortran-like language is easy (like C or JS). For someone who knows Common Lisp, Clojure is easy. But for someone who knows Fortran, Clojure is less familiar, hence the code will, on a glance, look less "readable".
The other factor is if something is "simple" by itself.
Most of this view comes from Rich Hickey, who wrote Clojure. He discusses "readability" or "simplicity" rather, in his talk "Simple Made Easy". If you haven't seen it before, do yourself a favor and watch it: https://www.infoq.com/presentations/Simple-Made-Easy/
He'll explain it much better, and with further points, much better than I ever can.