On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 22:42:29 +0100 (CET), Thomas Fischbacher
<Thomas.Fischbacher@physik.uni-muenchen.de> wrote:
> 
> On Sun, 13 Feb 2005, Michael Walter wrote:
> 
> > Your argument regarding Lisp and O'caml ignores the fact that
> > programming languages are to a large part about syntax - for obviously
> > valid reasons like accessability, maintainability, expressiveness,
> > etc.
> >
> > I feel I've mentioned that so many times it should be in some FAQ ;o)
> 
> With a parser generator (take zebu, for example) and, say,
> SET-DISPATCH-MACRO-CHARACTER, I just as well can give you any syntax you
> want on top of lisp. But I think you understand if I don't post code
> that explicitly demonstrates how to do that now.

This has obvious restrictrions in Common Lisp (you even mentioned one
of them in UPPERCASE-LETTERS :). The fact that few people actually
extend the syntax of CL beyond mere S-expressions also indicates that
(the usual counter goes like "we are happy with S-expressions", which
I believe is not the entire story :). [1]

I can imagine, though, that there might eventually be a language (or
environment), which gets rid of some of those restrictions, which is
one of the reasons why I've a.. more open attitude to new programming
languages and environments :) [2,3]

Michael

[1] It works great for embedding XML into CL, though :-)
http://blog.leetspeak.org/wp-content/xmlhack.png
[2] e.g. Logix, see http://logix.livelogix.com/
[3] e.g. IP, see google &
http://www.aisto.com/roeder/paper/IntentionalProgramming.ppt