I was first exposed to Lisp via AutoCad in 1989, but other than creating the most simple programs it has never made much sense as a language compared to BASIC and those using semi-colons.
Just last night, I read PG's explanation of Lisp in Hackers and Painters that Lisp's parentheses are there because a Lisp program is its own parse tree (I hope I got that right) and that this is what gives it its flavor.
That explanation is what I think was missing from the Lisp tutorials I used to read, and what is missing from the article. Showing a few examples of lisp programs shows how all those insipid parentheses are used, but doesn't explain why.
A lisp tutorial can't look like a semicolon language tutorial without ignoring what's most beneficial in the language. To understand lisp, I think grsping the computer science concepts matters to a degree that it doesn't in some other languages.
Just last night, I read PG's explanation of Lisp in Hackers and Painters that Lisp's parentheses are there because a Lisp program is its own parse tree (I hope I got that right) and that this is what gives it its flavor.
That explanation is what I think was missing from the Lisp tutorials I used to read, and what is missing from the article. Showing a few examples of lisp programs shows how all those insipid parentheses are used, but doesn't explain why.
A lisp tutorial can't look like a semicolon language tutorial without ignoring what's most beneficial in the language. To understand lisp, I think grsping the computer science concepts matters to a degree that it doesn't in some other languages.