Why don't people like lisp?

[Mark Wilson]

On Sunday, October 19, 2003, at 03:59 AM, David Mertz wrote:

> [snip]
>
> I -did- do a little bit of Scheme programming lately (I guess before I
> was barred from all future downloads :-)).  Admittedly, this was
> starting from little familiarity with the language (and also I cannot
> get my little brain around emacs, and jEdit on my Powerbook doesn't 
> seem
> to want to reindent for me--maybe there's a plugin to do that).
>
> I found that about 70% of the mistakes I made during playing with
> variations on some (pretty simple) functions were because of misplaced
> parentheses (most of the rest were from a fuzziness about the different
> between strings and symbols; but I think I've worked that out).  I sure
> had to stare a LOT longer at those parens (and do lots of counting on 
> my
> fingers) than I would have had to look at wrongly indented Python code.
> In fact, this much would be true even compared to way back during my
> first few weeks of Python programming.
>
> But maybe that error will go away over time.  I have some doubts, but
> also an open mind.
>
> [snip]

For Scheme, I recommend using Dr. Scheme, which can be found here:

http://www.drscheme.org/

Dr. Scheme's programming environment includes

1. a two paned (synchronized) window for interactive editing (the top 
window is for function definitions and other code and the bottom window 
is for interactive use)

2. ideal (for me) highlighting of s-expressions and visual cues to 
indicate excess parentheses

3. meaningful syntax and run-time error messages

4. visual backtraces

5. integrated test suite tools

and much much more.

Regards,

Mark Wilson