Michael T. Richter <mtr@ottawa.com> wrote:
+---------------
| Lisp and its kissing cousins will never grab me.  I can't stand the
| fingernail parings that are the Lisp prefix notation.  Haskell will only
| grab me if it ever gets a half-decent hygienic macro scheme...
+---------------

You contradict yourself. It is precisely Lisp's "fingernail parings"
(list-based notation for program source) that make its powerful macros
so incredibly easy to write & maintain. Show me *any* other language[*]
with anything close to Lisp's builtin "read" primitive, not to mention
providing the *full* language at compile time to reflexively construct
arbitrary source programs.


-Rob

[*] Other than Scheme, which unlike some others here, I *do* consider
    to be in the extended Lisp family, and to have the same advantages
    for macro writing.

-----
Rob Warnock, 31-2-510		rpw3@sgi.com
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