Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme

[Albert Lai]

corey.coughlin at attbi.com (Corey Coughlin) writes:

> (Not to mention car, cdr, cadr, and
> so on vs. index notation, sheesh.)

Yes, that is a real regret.  It should have been useful to support
a kind of (nth 10 mylist) straight from the Scheme standard library.

> Using parentheses and rpn everywhere makes lisp very easy
> to parse, but I'd rather have something easy for me to understand and
> That's why I prefer python, you
> get a nice algebraic syntax with infix and equal signs, and it's easy
> understand.
> Python is
> intuitive to me out of the box, and it just keeps getting better, so I
> think I'll stick with it.

First, a minor correction: Lisp/Scheme is like (* 1 2) and that is
Polish Notation or prefix; Reverse Polish Notation or postfix would be
like (1 2 *).

>From what I heard about the Japanese language I have formed the
possibly oversimplified impression that it is largely postfix.
Whereas in English we say "I beat you", they may say something like "I
you beat".  So I suppose all of the existing programming notations -
Lisp's and Cobol's (* 1 2) and MULTIPLY 1 BY 2, Fortran's "intuitive"
1+2, and OO's one.add(two) - are very counterintuitive to them, and
they would really like the way of HP calculators, no?

And I suppose the ancient Romans (and even the modern Vaticans) would
laugh at this entire dilemma (or trilemma?) between ___fixes.

Intuition is acquired.  It is purely a product of education or
brainwashing.  There is nothing natural about it.  And since it is
acquired, you may as well keep acquiring new intuitions and see more
horizons, rather than keep reinforcing old intuitions and stagnate.
Appreciating a foreign language such as Japanese some day is not a bad
idea.