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A comment on On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J. Parent comment

Re:On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J by Tichy on Tuesday December 09, 2008 @07:21AM (#391220)
Not against changing syntax in general, but in the case of LISP, it seems hard to change it without messing it up.

I guess I don't like more and more "special signs" (like @, [], <>, #) invading the code.

I've witnessed it with Java where a lot of new syntax was introduced. The thing is, these are all new concepts adding to the complexity of the language (annotations, generics,...). I prefer to keep things simple.

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Re:On Leaky Abstractions and Objective-J by shaunxcode on Wednesday December 10, 2008 @12:59PM (#393211)
Good point - there is definitely fundamentally beautiful and intrinsic about the balance and simplicity of lisp. Personally I find removing syntax (another way of changing it) to be an empowering project. My current project is to introduce a syntax for php which is something more along the lines of smalltalk meets lisp - the real trick here was removing syntax and making it more gramatically relevant if used at all.
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