On: Scheme Reports at Fifty

[mylifeandtimes]

I've never understood why people who have no problem with

print(foo)

get stuck at

(print foo)

I've always found the parenthesis comforting, we know where it starts and where it ends.

[munificent → mylifeandtimes]

I don't think they're fine with print(foo) and stuck at (print foo).

They're fine with:

    if a < b + c then d * e - f

And stuck at:

    (if (< a (+ b c)) (- (* d e)))

I personally don't mind s-expr syntax, but not having any infix expressions or precedence levels means a lot more parentheses in idiomatic code.

[bananaflag → mylifeandtimes]

What I found weird in Lisp (and didn't even realize at first) is that

foo

and

(foo)

mean something different.

I now understand it similarly to the way in set theory x and {x} are different, but one is not used to the ordinary parenthesis symbol behaving in this way.