On: Lambda’s New Coat: 21st century syntactic Mexps

[ynniv]

This idea comes up periodically, but it's something that appeals more to those who don't use lisp than those who do. I thought the same thing before I started really using lisp, but once you start feeling comfortable with sexps a superficial pythonic skin sounds annoying. The suggestion of trading lisp's macro features (how would you define macros with "mexps", and how would mexps interact with macros?) for syntactic whitespace that people either love or hate doesn't sound like a long term improvement.

"Mexps" might attract a few new people to lisp, but the existing lisp community would reject them. It would be more effective in the long term to show people the value of lisp's existing syntax.

[lubutu → ynniv]

maybe an alternative to sexps appeals to those who don't use lisp because they don't use lisp because of sexps?

the idea is that mexps translate directly (and simply) into sexps, so macros would work in exactly the same way as they do now.