It’s been particularly helpful to examine the HN source code, written in Arc, to better grasp what Paul means by each of his points (e.g., macros, language as data, etc.). I’ve also read through the entire proposal for Bel.
I think I understand the advantages of Lisp. It has a higher barrier to entry due to the parentheses syntax and the functional, non-object-oriented way of thinking. But once you overcome these challenges, Lisp makes it easy to build a new language for your domain, allowing for more conceptual compression. This is what ultimately enabled Viaweb to outpace competitors, implementing new features with such a small team at incredible speed.
It struck me that Lisp’s advantages and disadvantages parallel those of Linux. The “Lisp is the best language” argument lands similarly to the “Linux is the best OS” argument. Is there an opportunity for Lisp to learn from Linux?
The brilliant strategy of OS X when it came out was to build on top of Linux to gain its benefits while addressing the difficulties that made it challenging for novice computer users.
Is there an opportunity for someone to create a Lisp that harnesses all of its power but with an easier learning curve?
Paul argues that the parentheses and Polish notation are inherent consequences of the language’s power. This is one point I still don’t fully grasp. Why can’t the syntax of Lisp be made more approachable (more “reads like English”) while still maintaining its power?
I begin to suspect somebody is feeding Mark V. Shaney in his cage and he's emitting text sequences again.
To (not) answer your last comment, discussions about computer language syntax are often not as useful as semantics, but in the case of LISP this is usally inverted. LISP syntax is a formal construct with unambiguous parsing states when it is well formed and English is a language notorious for having ambiguous parsing states when it is formed well.
Who do you want to hire?
For all of MacOS' brilliant strategy, the idea of an Xserve Sysadmin exists solely in fiction these days. Linux is comparatively a blowout success, and a lot of people know it as a result. According to StackOverflow's survey[0], Lisp's popularity among professional developers is lower than the interest in ObjectiveC. It's not the Linux of languages, because Linux is a fundamentally popular.
I don't work with Lisp because the code all blends into each other after a while, and I'm a full-blown Scheme apologist. But look - real-world problems demand real-world solutions, ones that you can reliably scale to 20 or 200 developers. Lisp is a pet language, and you have to live in a world that treats projects like cattle. The real question is mostly how far your personal dedication will go towards making it work.
[0] https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2024/technology#most-popular...
OS X / macOS has nothing to do with Linux. It's a Mach derivative sprinkled with BSD.
And to answer your last question, no, lisp cannot read like English since predicate precedes subject a la Yodaspeak.
They say Common Lisp was the first OOP language to be ANSI-standardized.
It and its ancestral dialects pretty much all support imperative programming with mutable variables and mutable fields in objects.