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> I used to like Lisp's homoiconicity. These days, I'm not even sure the concept makes any sense? What is it even supposed to mean?

You are not alone:

http://calculist.org/blog/2012/04/17/homoiconicity-isnt-the-...



Thanks! That blog post expresses much more clearly what I am trying to say.

Btw, it seems you could implement a 'read' that also recognises Python/Haskell-style significant indentation in addition to parens only. That would be an interesting elaboration of the point in the post.


> Parentheses make it unambiguous for the expander to understand what the arguments to a macro are, because it’s always clear where the arguments begin and end. It knows this without needing to understand anything about what the macro definition is going to do. Imagine trying to define a macro expander for a language with syntax like JavaScript’s.

Are you sure this blog post is making the point you have been trying to make?

Here is blog post that explores writing C in s-expressions.

https://itnext.io/what-makes-lisp-unique-8a0576b42293




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