From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=-1.9 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00 autolearn=ham autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f4fd2,626a0a064b320310 X-Google-Attributes: gidf4fd2,public X-Google-Thread: 103376,ea8ea502d35ca2ce X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 2001-05-27 15:34:37 PST Path: archiver1.google.com!newsfeed.google.com!newsfeed.stanford.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!ucberkeley!hammer.uoregon.edu!enews.sgi.com!newshub2.rdc1.sfba.home.com!news.home.com!news2.rdc2.tx.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Message-ID: <3B11AC75.9A0E896D@home.com> From: Larry Elmore X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.77 [en] (X11; U; Linux 2.4.4 i586) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada,comp.lang.lisp Subject: Re: Beginner's Language? References: <9cukad$nn68@news-dxb> <9d6b6e$1bt$1@nh.pace.co.uk> <87snihxiwc.fsf@frown.here> <9dbi83$sji$1@nh.pace.co.uk> <3AFACCA0.303A79AF@baesystems.com> <87oft0pi6x.fsf@frown.here> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 22:34:36 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 65.10.25.74 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news2.rdc2.tx.home.com 991002876 65.10.25.74 (Sun, 27 May 2001 15:34:36 PDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Sun, 27 May 2001 15:34:36 PDT Organization: Excite@Home - The Leader in Broadband http://home.com/faster Xref: archiver1.google.com comp.lang.ada:7822 comp.lang.lisp:10814 Date: 2001-05-27T22:34:36+00:00 List-Id: "Alejandro R. Mosteo" wrote: > > Mmm... I've used many languages and Lisp was taught to me after two or > three years of programming experience. > > I can't understand how anyone could defend Lisp as a first language. You > can get crazy with the parentheses, the reference/no-reference things > (setf, set...) Recursivity, lists in all places... Car and cdr... mapcar > and friends... XD I don't see what's so bad about the parentheses, not if you're using any kind of a decent editor that understands such things. With a lot of code I don't think there's a great deal of difference between the number of parentheses in Lisp and the number of parentheses plus square brackets, curly braces, semicolons, etc. At least with the Lisp code, there's _no_ amibiguity about operator precedence! As far as pointers and lists go, I suspect that if you'd learned Lisp first, you'd have had no problem at all with them, and then would've been highly annoyed by the comparatively primitive aspects of so many other languages when dealing with higher-level constructs. > I admit: after some time, I get comfortable with Lisp. Even could say it > is funny. But I know people that never was capable of fully understand > what was happening in some of his own programs :-) I've known programmers who have the same problem with C/C++, and worse, have had to maintain code written by them! They'd have problems in any language they used, I think -- if they can't properly use lists in Lisp, heaven help them when they need to handle lists in C/C++! > Definitely, Lisp for a newbie on programming is... Oh, I have no words! It certainly beats the hell out of C/C++, Fortran, Cobol or Basic! Of course, you'd teach programming in Lisp with a subset of the language. It'd be even more likely to confuse them if you hit them with the full complexity of Ada right off the bat (and with all of C++, you'd likely scare off 99% of them). Larry