Lisp simplifies things

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

Interesting

A related complaint is that Lisp is too strange and hard to understand. There is a misguided notion that programming languages should resemble English. Which has given us COBOL, BASIC and AppleScript. (I have fond memories of BASIC, and Microsoft had a pretty good run with it, but no one’s going to write AI programs or even web server applications with it). English expression of computer programs is as efficient and clear as writing mathematical formulas in English.

Simplicity lends itself to elegance. You know you’re using an elegant language if you’re not distracted by discussions of proper style. I don’t recall wasting time on coding style debates when working in Lisp. But after moving to Java and C++, nearly every organization I joined made a big deal about adherence to a coding standard, which usually involved some variation of the the abomination known as Hungarian notation. (Although Sun has defined a perfectly readable and simple style exemplified in the Java standard class libraries, and Hungarian notation is a monster when applied to object-oriented languages). A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, the saying goes. So is a mandated coding style. When you’re programming, you should be thinking more about the problem than the language.