Right. Mainstream languages have been gradually evolving towards Lisp but until ...

DrJokepu · on Jan 6, 2010

I believe that appreciating Lisp's minimalistic, tree-like syntax requires a very mathematical way of thinking. Many (perhaps most) developers have a different way of thinking. There's nothing wrong with that, diversity is a good thing but because of that, I don't think that the S-Expression syntax will ever become "mainstream".

abstractbill · on Jan 6, 2010

I think I agree... I'm undecided though. I actually find JSON to be a positive development, and potentially a step in this direction (i.e. the fact that people now use javascript literal data syntax as a way of serializing general data, and the syntax has been written down somewhere quite carefully and is not too verbose or ugly - at least compared to something like xml). Who knows how far the mainstream will take this though...

_19qg · on Jan 6, 2010

It is already.

XML is full of prefix, nested syntax.

abstractbill · on Jan 6, 2010

Yes, but nobody would seriously write a programming language that used XML for its syntax.

_19qg · on Jan 7, 2010

So you say existing XML-based programming languages were 'written' by non-serious people?

'Water':

    <defmethod test_true source=required="ek_string"> 
     <try <if> source.<execute_string/>.<not/>   
                 <concat "Busted: "source/>.<print/>
               else “OK”
          </if>
    
       >
      <concat "Errored: " source/>.<print/>
     </try>
   </defmethod>