No, I'm serious. Lisp is incredibly fast to write, and (with a bit of practice) is amazingly readable. People foreign to Lisp often look at it and without even slightest attempt to give it a try, immediately reject it as "hard to read".
But in reality, as I said - Lisp retains readability even on small screens, good luck trying that with literally any other programming language.
The only drawback of Lisp syntax I can think of - probably it is not a very good choice for white-boarding interviews.
> People foreign to Lisp often look at it and without even slightest attempt to give it a try, immediately reject it as "hard to read".
You'll have to take my word for it, but I have put significant time and effort into trying to familiarize myself with lisp. I still found it extremely difficult to read at the end of that effort. I don't think I'm alone in this. But there are definitely people such as yourself who find it extremely readable. I'm not sure why there's such a divide.
> Lisp retains readability even on small screens, good luck trying that with literally any other programming language.
Is this a need that arises frequently? I don't think I've ever wanted to do that, but I am willing to believe it's something many people might want.
In editors that have good support for vertical splits, yes. Before Lisp I would never keep more than two-three split windows, with Lisp I sometimes do four, even six vertical splits at the same time - just because I can.
I'm fairly fluent in for example regex and awk, but I'm not blind to what it looks like to someone coming into it with no experience. That doesn't mean they are bad programmers. There are a lot of languages, and some are closer to each other than others.
Maybe you started out with an easier way into Lisp, or had a knack for it, or just spent time in it at a point when you had more motivation or time to get into it. There's more to learn in the world than people could do in a thousand lifetimes, so I wouldn't fault anyone for turning around in the door if it's something they have no interest in at the get-go.
I'm not trying to belittle anyone. Sometimes, I don't understand tribalism against Lisp syntax. I question its sincerity, probably because of my own indisposition towards Lisp that I carried for decades (without much rationale to support my skepticism). When I finally got to start using Lisp, I was fascinated by how much joy it brought to my work, and I hated my younger self and regretted that I have never encountered someone who would've convinced me to try it sooner.
All of those statements about Lisp would do better with the qualifier "for me". Lisp people tend to assume that what they can read most easily is most readable for everyone and that makes them dismissive of those who find it hard to read - and that dismissiveness counts against Lisp adoption.
> Lisp retains readability even on small screens, good luck trying that with literally any other programming language
I learned from Sinclair BASIC on a 32x24 character display on a black-and-white PAL television, as did a lot of people. Readability is highly subjective.
I've seen it multiple times - it's only the initial reaction, it doesn't usually take too long for anyone to adjust to the syntax. I have never met anyone who used a Lisp for several months and still hates it and finds it unreadable. I wouldn't count anecdotal encounters of people online, claiming for it to be mostly true.
I have seen people using one Lisp e.g., Clojure and having difficulty quickly parsing a different Lisp dialect, e.g., EmacsLisp, but that's not "Lisp being unreadable," it's just unfamiliarity with specific language idioms.
I had also seen people who learned Clojure before any other languages and then tried learning a non-lispy language (java, python, etc.) and surprisingly claimed it to be harder to read (initially).
> that dismissiveness counts against Lisp adoption
I agree, but how do you fix this problem? You can't remove parens and keep it homoiconic. Tools like Parinfer do help, but they don't address the problem: Lisp doesn't look "sexy" for those who are unfamiliar with it. I kept ignoring Lisp for many years, simply because I didn't know better. I wish there were people who'd keep telling me that parentheses are not a problem, they are a solution.
