I don't like to be so negative without an objective reason, but that was really very rambling. I don't feel like I learned anything there.
I don't doubt Lisp is beautiful, but I don't think the author explained it well.
I don't doubt Lisp is beautiful, but I don't think the author explained it well.
As a result of Lisp being in prefix notation, which is just a fancy way of saying you always put the action first (for instance you add numbers like (+ x y z)), that design choice results in EVERY part of the language having the same syntax. That is, everything is an action that eventually returns a value, and it all is used the same way. There are no special syntaxes -- loops, conditionals, function definitions, everything. Since it's all the same, everything all the way up to the top level is one action composed of other actions chained together.
Parentheses in Lisp languages are used differently than other languages: parentheses are used for grouping and ordering in other languages, but in Lisps they're used to denote scope. The first word after an open paren is always an action, and every word thereafter is always an argument. Then arguments can be a lower level of scope which performs another action, and so on.
So really, Lisp has almost no syntax at all, and a Lisp program is nothing but a big tree of actions that start at the top level and work down (sort of).
I've heard of it described as, "programming in the AST." You don't have to think hard about how an expression will be interpreted. In fact you can get very far with just the substitution model of eval and apply as they started off with in the SICP lectures.
Basically, rthomas6 explained it better. But may you allow me to rephrase myself, as a complement as much as an excuse?
There are 3 points.
The first says that Lisp is simple because once you know how to write function calls in classic language (like C, Java, Javascript...), you have all you need to write Lisp code. And really any Lisp code, not just function calls in Lisp.
The second point was that more classic languages go not just one but many different syntax routes while one is good enough to code.
Concretely, for a whole month I was thinking first as writing Java code and then translating it mentally into Lisp. Until I reached enough confidence to let that go and just code in Lisp. When I did that, everything fell apart. Except for one rule: write chainable action perimeters. It is enough, no matter how astonishing it may seem.
The last point was not much about saying that Lisp is beautiful. If anything, I find it elegant but not quite beautiful. No, the last point was about saying it is enough to look at Lisp for 5 minutes and then you are good to go.
Both ways really.
Use it right away, totally possible. Go away from it, entirely reasonable too. Just know that not much other language can maintain such a degree of decency because they generally claim more of your time right at the beginning while also having the nerve to give less.
In short, I'm saying Lisp is nothing special. In particular, it hasn't the ability to illuminate your own programming practice. I'm just saying that from my own particular experience, it does have illuminated my practice because of the other languages.
Lisp has not made me step forward because of what it is in itself. It made me step forward because every other programming languages I practiced have made me walk backwards.