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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> I feel the need to say it every time I see new lisp-like language. Normal people don't like lisp, it looks weird.

So? Normal people aren’t computing enthusiasts, so...

> Are lisp-like language designers aware of that?

No, lisp-like language designers have never hears the parenphobes that jump into every discussion of lisp-like languages to make their feelings known.

Also, no one involved in Python, YAML, etc., has ever heard anyone complain about indent-sensitive syntax.

> You are throwing away sizeable portion of the possible user base.

Parenphobes are throwing away a sizable portion of their potential toolkit. If they are okay with that, I am sure lisp-like language designers (especially the ones doing it as a labor of love and not getting paid for it) can live with losing the neediest, most entitled segment of their “potential user base”.

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> So? Normal people aren’t computing enthusiasts, so...

even many (most?) computing enthusiasts aren’t into lisp. I am. Since this language is lisp-y but not deeply lisp, you’re now finding that not only are anti-lispers put off, but also lispers.

Would you also say that musicians should only create and perform popular music?

absolutely not! people should do whatever they want but if you’re going to make atonal music in a non-traditional scale, you shouldn’t be surprised if you have a limited audience.

So? Nobody is surprised that lisps aren't popular.

vaguely kinda related. I want to like lisp for its features but the syntax is too much for me to pick up without serious time investment, which I am not sure I want to make.

are there any other languages that support for example lisp-like interactive REPL, eg analyzing program state while it is running?

Lisp syntax is a lack of syntax, it takes five minutes to learn. Everything being an expression, expressions being replaceable by their evaluation, quote/unquote/quasiquote, macros is what'll take time to adapt to.

Conveniently analysing program state while it's running is more a feature of languages that run in an image than something lisplikes have in common, like Common Lisp, Factor and Pharo, but not Racket or Guile.

Funnily, I'm the exact opposite. I love the simple and consistent syntax of Lisp, but I don't want to use a dynamically typed language if I can avoid it.

That's why I fell in love with SBCL, it'll warn me about things like "hey, you told me this variable is an integer, but you're calling length on it, that doesn't make sense."

> the syntax is too much for me to pick up without serious time investment

Umm, do you know any language with simpler syntax than Lisp has?

For me, the main problem with Lisp is that there's so many Lisps. I think I philosophically prefer Scheme over Common Lisp, but then again there are so many Schemes to choose from!

> I want to like lisp for its features but the syntax is too much for me to pick up without serious time investment

There's atoms, and lists, and at the highest level of a program, the head of the list is the thing to be invoked (function, macro, special form) and the tail is a list of args. At lower levels, the higher level context says what a list means, but either a list itself or the same head/tail interpretation are the main things.

And there are some quoting constructs that control if things are bare atoms or references to the values of names, etc., and that's about it. Lisp has very little syntax. I mean, unless your main language is raw assembler or some esoteric toy like brainfuck, lisp almost certainly has much less syntax.

> are there any other languages that support for example lisp-like interactive REPL, eg analyzing program state while it is running?

Erlang.

Ruby (via Pry).

Lots of others.

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