People who cannot read Lisp or find it difficult to scan Lisp code with their eyes, or those who try Lisp for the first time, usually approach it the same way as they've probably done many times with other programming languages. They stare at it and try to make sense of the code.
However, that's not how Lispers usually read Lisp code. Lispers would connect to a REPL and start "dissecting" the code evaluating it piece by piece. Lisp is unlike many other PLs where you usually have to follow "write -> save -> lint|compile -> run -> check the results" routine, boils down to "write -> eval -> check the results".
You can even say that coding in Lisp is dealing with a "living," "breathing" program, whereas in other PLs - your program is "dead" and comes to life only after it's compiled and ran.
> It is avoided commercially for this reason.
Lisp is being used today by Apple, Walmart, Cisco, Amazon, Netflix, and even NASA and many other companies. Huge banks and FinTech startups around the world actively using it. Clojure is the most popular programming language in its category of PLs with strong FP emphasis. It is more popular than Haskell, OCaml, Elm, Elixir, Purescript, and recently surpassed Scala.
Not a single guru, CS veteran or renowned programmer ever complained about Lisp being hard to read, because they understand - if they know anything about programming at all, publicly saying shit like that would raise many eyebrows.
But every single time someone mentions Lisp on HN, there will be at least one dyslisplexic, who has never developed enough patience or inner curiosity to learn it.
However, that's not how Lispers usually read Lisp code. Lispers would connect to a REPL and start "dissecting" the code evaluating it piece by piece. Lisp is unlike many other PLs where you usually have to follow "write -> save -> lint|compile -> run -> check the results" routine, boils down to "write -> eval -> check the results".
You can even say that coding in Lisp is dealing with a "living," "breathing" program, whereas in other PLs - your program is "dead" and comes to life only after it's compiled and ran.
> It is avoided commercially for this reason.
Lisp is being used today by Apple, Walmart, Cisco, Amazon, Netflix, and even NASA and many other companies. Huge banks and FinTech startups around the world actively using it. Clojure is the most popular programming language in its category of PLs with strong FP emphasis. It is more popular than Haskell, OCaml, Elm, Elixir, Purescript, and recently surpassed Scala.
Not a single guru, CS veteran or renowned programmer ever complained about Lisp being hard to read, because they understand - if they know anything about programming at all, publicly saying shit like that would raise many eyebrows.
But every single time someone mentions Lisp on HN, there will be at least one dyslisplexic, who has never developed enough patience or inner curiosity to learn it.