Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme

[Category 5]

kaz at ashi.footprints.net (Kaz Kylheku) writes:

> Lisp macros are part of the toolset that allow this translation itself
> to be programmable. Thus you are not stuck with a fixed phrase
> structure grammar with fixed semantics.
>
> Nearly every programming language has macros, it's just that most of
> them have a hard-coded set of ``factory defined'' macros in the form
> of a fixed set of production rules with rigidly defined semantics.

Exactly so.  But the average human mind clings viciously to rigid schema
of all kinds in reflexive defence against the terrible uncertainties of
freedom.

To get someone with this neurological ailment to give up their preferred
codification for another is very difficult.  To get them to see beyond
the limits of particular hardcoded schema altogether is practically
impossible.

This observation applies uniformly to programming and religion, but is
not limited to them.

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