What Lisp helps you is grokking actual operations of computing and, especially when all you have is a really dumbed down algol, opens you up to more programming methods and techniques. All of that happens on layer high above syntax.
What Lisp helps you is grokking actual operations of computing and, especially when all you have is a really dumbed down algol, opens you up to more programming methods and techniques. All of that happens on layer high above syntax.
Computing in the theoretical sense, right? I've always heard the opposite of this claim: Lisp abstracts away how computation is done on actual hardware. Isn't that what the famous Alan Perlis quote was referring to?
Specifically, ANSI Common Lisp is equipped with a function called DISASSEMBLE, and on many implementations it will provide you not only with plain assembly dump, but also with comments regarding said assembly, for example a comment specifying "we're calling X here", "this is handler for single parameter, and this is for multiple parameters" (in case of optional arguments to function)