An Intuition for Lisp Syntax

Re:An Intuition for Lisp Syntax by Rerarom on Friday May 28, 2021 @01:08AM (#27311922)

My initial problem with parentheses wasn't the stacking of them -- that's inevitable even in elementary arithmetic -- but with the fact that x is not the same as (x), which doesn't happen in math and doesn't get emphasised enough in Lisp intros. Once I got that, everything was easy.

Edit: To answer to the responses to this comment, it's not that it's conceptually hard, it's just that the parenthesis symbol in its usual incarnation does not work that way, which leads to confusion.

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Re:An Intuition for Lisp Syntax by dhanvanthri on Friday May 28, 2021 @02:42AM (#27312410)

I mean it's literally the same idea as in set theory.

phi is an empty set,

(phi) is a set containing an empty set

((phi)) is a set containing a set containing an empty set

Furthermore, it's one of the only syntax rules; if it's not a list, then the first element is an operator/function.

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Re:An Intuition for Lisp Syntax by Koshkin on Friday May 28, 2021 @02:44PM (#27319054)

Hmm, never thought of ∅ as a φ. (According to Wikipedia, the symbol was introduced in the 1930s by Weil, inspired by the letter Ø in the Danish and Norwegian alphabets.)

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Re:An Intuition for Lisp Syntax by Rerarom on Friday May 28, 2021 @03:02AM (#27312518)

I agree with that, but in set theory the symbol {} is used.

I have nothing against it, I just think it should be emphasized more.

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Re:An Intuition for Lisp Syntax by lisper on Friday May 28, 2021 @01:40AM (#27312097)

It's no different than x being different from x() in C-like languages.

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