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I don't have the same experience. I find s-expressions more pleasant to read. On the other hand, I find the syntax of C, Python, etc. to be jarring! The syntax
by ctrlmeta 4y ago
I don't have the same experience. I find s-expressions more pleasant to read. On the other hand, I find the syntax of C, Python, etc. to be jarring! The syntax of Rust and C++ feels like nails on chalkboard to me. What I find even more uncomfortable about C++ and Rust (and Python to some extent) is that they keep innovating on syntax and the syntax becomes more and more complex as years go by.
Compared to that mess, Lisp's s-expression is a breath of fresh air. The brain ignores the parentheses soon (just as the brain ignores the braces in C-like languages) and relies on the indentation to understand the structure of the code.
Having said that I do find the prefix notation slightly unintuitive for complex math formulas. Simple stuff like (< x y) is clear to me. No confusion there. But something like the formula for finding quadratic roots feels a bit unwieldy in s-expression syntax. I am sure that is because of years of conditioning of infix notation. Because pre-fix (or post-fix) are purer and unambiguous representations of the mathematical operations we perform. Yet conditioning has made pre-fix or post-fix hard to read for complex math formulas.