Lisp, Smalltalk, and the power of symmetry (2014)

There's something magically expressive about S-expressions and processing them. For a linguistic project I was thinking about how to represent sentence syntax as data and then I came across Chomsky's phrase structure analysis[1] which parses spoken language exactly like S-expressions in LISP! It's even illustrated with parenthesis or syntax trees, just like the old SICP vids explain. The phrase structure even uses recursive definitions so processing and inflecting the content of sentences can be done with…

The thing about both Lisp and Smalltalk that keeps making me feel alienated is that their power seems much weaker beyond their kingdom. The outside world does not have an object browser, nor is it made of s-expressions. Tcl occupies a very nice place in this regard: its homoiconicity and symmetry (and late binding) come from text. The outside world, to a very close approximation, is also made of text. Subprocesses, sockets, FFI, files and user interaction just feel more…

Many earlier comments: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=Lisp%2C%20Smalltalk%2C%20and%2...