Why don't people like lisp?

[Edi Weitz]

On Sun, 19 Oct 2003 12:12:37 -0400, "Terry Reedy" <tjreedy at udel.edu> wrote:

> Last night I accepted the repeated suggestion to download and read
> (some of) OnLisp.  Problem: I *don't* know the arglist structure of
> every form Graham uses, and since Graham assumes such knowledge, I
> had to count parens to reverse engineer function prototypes and
> determine what is an argument to what.  A Python beginner would more
> easily do this with Python code.

Well, "On Lisp" is not a book for beginners. It's a book about the
power of CL macros and was written for people who alread know Common
Lisp.

> What is ILISP.

  <http://www.cliki.net/ILISP>
  <http://sourceforge.net/projects/ilisp/>

> Is there a usable online CL reference that would let me lookup, for
> instance, DO and get the prototype and short description?

Yes, definitely. Common Lisp has an ANSI standard and the ANSI
standard is available online.[1]

  <http://www.lispworks.com/reference/HyperSpec/Front/index.htm>

Be warned that this is a language standard, though. It's not a
textbook written for people who want to learn the language.

Tools like ILISP will allow you do put your cursor on a symbol and
open the corresponding page of the HyperSpec with one keystroke. Or
try something like <http://weitz.de/clhs.html>.

> Lisp-aware editors do not solve the problem of reading Lisp code
> embedded in text, as with OnLisp formatted .ps or .pdf.

Yes, but experience does.

Edi.

[1] Well, technically this is not the ANSI standard (you have to pay
    money to ANSI to get it - it's a printed document) but for all
    practical purposes it is.