sexprs [Re: Why don't people like lisp?

[james anderson]

one of the ironic, telling things about that exposition, is that the
syntax-error contraposition is not quite right.

Andrew Dalke wrote:
> 
>
> 
> > There's one area where Lisp absolutely rules, which is providing a way
> > to write down complicated data structures without much fuss.  These
> > days, XML is used as a Bizarro cousin of Lisp S-expressions in all
> > kinds of applications for similar purposes.
> 
> That's an old debate.  Here's a counter-response
>   http://www.prescod.net/xml/sexprs.html
> 

it also misses the point, that  "abstract" is not "concrete", and the surface
syntax in the input stream is not everything. an issue which "xml" will still
be fighting with long after the last so-encoded bits have long faded into the
aether. 

analogies apply.

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