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This article is good to get an idea what lisp is all about.

http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html

It compares lisp to XML. In that you are programming in a tree. Other languages must be parsed into a tree by the compiler, but with lisp you are already there from the get go.

Programming in a tree is the "magic" that's unique to lisp. And it is a big deal.

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Lisp is awesome, but I think you're doing it a disservice by comparing it to XML, which is a technology that was derived straight from Satan's bottom. Lisp is elegant. XML, not so much.

This isn't exactly relevant to the OP, but, what's wrong with XML?

It's useful to compare Lisp to XML from the data notation aspect. As in, look, we already had better ideas for tree-structured data being communicated in text, forty years before XML.

Thanks. These gems are particularly the kind of insight I am relying on HN for!

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