Homoiconicity isn’t the point (2012)

Re:Homoiconicity isn’t the point (2012) by taeric on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @08:36AM (#27049094)

This feels like a somewhat dubious metric, all told. For one, complexity of language says little about complexity of programs made in language. And, that is usually more influenced by age of the code base with how many are contributing to the code base.

Still, if you find the article, is be delighted to see the argument being made.

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Re:Homoiconicity isn’t the point (2012) by bsder on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @05:07PM (#27055854)

> This feels like a somewhat dubious metric, all told.

The claim was: Python was easy for beginners. Certainly a simpler, more consistent grammar is easier for beginners.

For me, I left Perl for exactly that reason. Python just seemed to "fit in my head" much more easily than Perl. Scalar vs List context is a PITA.

> For one, complexity of language says little about complexity of programs made in language.

True. But I can also tell you that I could come back to my Python code a couple months later and still understand it. That never happened with my Perl code.

And, this really got put to the test when Python code I wrote 15 years ago came back home to roost. Yeah, I cringed at some of the ways I did things in the code (although probably I should be kinder to my younger self--it was Python 1 code chewing through nasty binary formats), but I could still understand it and debug it.

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Re:Homoiconicity isn’t the point (2012) by taeric on Wednesday May 05, 2021 @11:01PM (#27058706)

I disagree that a simpler grammar makes it easier.

And comparing to perl is amusing. That is famously a write only language. Easy to build quick text processing in, but about it.

For older code, this is a point I give to lisp. Not only can I still read most older code, I can still run it.

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