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What makes Lisp difficult to read?

47 points · 81 comments · ibobev

  1. z5h · · focus · HN ↗
    I think the biggest problem is that expressions are lists, but we build lists with quoting, AND unquoting (or quasiquoting). It takes some effort to look at an expression and be certain of what will be run. Are we displaying the instructions to erase the hard drive, or the output of erasing the hard drive.

    Compare this with Prolog. I like to say "a term is just a term until it's a goal". Assuming we have an erase_hard_drive/1 predicate, I know it's safe to do

        write_term(erase_hard_drive([force,silent,noprompt]), [])
    
    or

        EraseCommand = erase_hard_drive([force,silent,noprompt]).
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