>(understandp sturmhauke lisp)
NIL
>(hatep sturmhauke lisp)
T
>(too (many)
(goddamn
(paren (theses))))
T
>(project-status sturmhauke 8-puzzle-program)
FUCKED
>(gives-a-shitp sturmhauke '(Lisp programs can write other Lisp programs! Hooray!!))
NIL
>(brain-friedp sturmhauke)
WARNING - FUNCTION <0A3D9F4E BRAIN-FRIEDP> CONTAINS FATAL ERROR, BRAIN IS IRRECOVERABLE, TERMINATING PROGRAM
“Lisp has all the visual appeal of oatmeal with fingernail clippings mixed in.” -Larry Wall
I feel your pain. I think Lisp is one of the ugliest languages on the planet.
This is rich coming from the creator of Perl one of the most unreadable languages on the planet.
As a former APL programmer, I sneer at Lisp and Perl, and laugh disdainfully at their character sets.
I feel your pain, sturmhauke. But now I love programming in Lisp. I guess it’s just something you get used to after a while. Part of it is that I’ve always liked recursion, so I took pretty quickly to how Lisp likes to do things (for our first assignment, our teacher forbade us from doing anything in an iterative manner).
That said, here’s an interview that might interest you, wherein the interviewee talks about the parentheses and features he likes about Lisp, etc.
I love Lisp! But if I’d had to do it in vi, or any other editor that didn’t bounce parentheses, I definitely would have shot myself in the head no later than the second day.
LISP: Lots of Itty-bitty Stupid Parentheses
[sub]Jeez, Lisp jokes. I am such a geek.[/sub]
Perl has the potential to be unreadable. In the hands of a skilled coder, however, who understands the nature of Perl and the differences between it and other languages, it is extremely readable, beautiful, elegant, and spiffarifous.
LISP: Lots of Irritating Superfluous Parentheses. 
(Actually I think the design of LISP is kinda cool.)
You weirdo Lisp-lovers can keep your language, I’m sticking to C++ where possible.
Readable? Beautiful? Elegant? Spiffarifous?
10 PRINT "YOU SUCK"
20 GOTO 10
That can be optimized.
10 PRINT "YOU SUCK" : GOTO 10
Let’s trim that down a bit more…
10 ? "YOU SUCK" : GOTO 10
Still too much whitespace.
10 ?"YOU SUCK":GOTO 10
And l33tspeak:
10 ?"U SUK":GOTO 10
…maybe this is why I opted against programming as a career choice.
Any language has the potential to be unreadable in the hands of the right coder. Surprisingly, it actually takes a really good programmer to write truly unreadable code. I’m not gonna claim to be really good, but I can write C++ without using for’s, if’s, or while’s, and you might imagine that such code isn’t necessarily the cleanest or easiest to understand.
If you’re feeling brave, you might want to check out the International Obfuscated C Code Contest site. There’re some real mind-bogglers there.
Can anyone recommend a good free Lisp interpreter for PC? The ones I have, Franz and Corman, both kinda suck. Hell, Corman doesn’t even work half the time.
void main(void){int i=0;char msg=“J\0qsfgfs\0D\0”;for(i=0;i<=10;i++)putchar(msg*-1);}
void main(void){int j=0;char msg=“J\0qsfgfs\0D\0”;for(j=0;j<=10;j++)putchar(msg[j]-1);}
^note to self: preview before posting. Apologies to the mods.
void main(void){int l=0;char msg=“J\0qsfgfs\0D\0”;for(l=0;l<=10;l++)putchar(msg[l]-1);}
Studying Scheme for my Programming Languages class, I experienced the giddy thrill of being inducted into the cult of the functional programmers. I actually thought that I was ingesting a new programming paradigm. I saw past the parentheses to the beautiful structure of every function that was a program in and of itself. I began to speak recursively to my friends, who were no longer my friends after I took the class.
Then we got to Chapter 7, where the textbook sheepishly admitted that even Scheme, simple, elegant Scheme, needed to have procedural bits to work.
Java, here I come.
Here’s something you guys’ll probably find interesting. It describes esoteric programming languages like brainf*ck (yes, that’s its real name) and the one-instruction computer.
Nooooooooooooooooooo!!!
For the love of all things Holy stay away from that abomination.
If you want to see a really cool language that’s really object oriented (like Java pretends to be) check out Ruby.
Why not go straight to the source (and prebuilt binaries)?
Oh, BTW, I hate lisp, mostly because I’ve never had the opportunity to learn it well. My preferred poison is C++, and I’ll never touch Perl again if I can avoid it now that I’ve found Python.
(oh, and just to make it interesting, I hate EMACS–I use VIM :))
Bah! I’ll have no truck with the bastard child of perl and python.