Talk:Lisp (programming language)

Alleged Paul Graham quote

The article previously claimed:

• More than anything else, I think it is the ability of Lisp programs to manipulate Lisp expressions that sets Lisp apart. And so no one who has not written a lot of macros is really in a position to compare Lisp to other languages. When I hear people complain about Lisp's parentheses, it sounds to my ears like someone saying: "I tried one of those bananas, which you say are so delicious. The white part was ok, but the yellow part was very tough and tasted awful."
  • Paul Graham

While I see this on the Web in lots of places -- in exactly this form -- I can't find any evidence that Graham actually said it. It certainly sounds like him, but we need better sources than that. Crucially, I can't find it on his own Web site, where you'd certainly expect to see it if he wrote it. So I'm moving it here to give someone a chance to find any reliable source at all for the attribution. 121a0012 05:05, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Anonymous said....

I removed the following. I cannot find any reliable source for the following:

• Q: How can you tell when you've reached Lisp Enlightenment?
  A: The parentheses disappear.
  • Anonymous

• You are in a maze of twisty little parentheses, all alike.
  • Anonymous on comp.lang.python in reference to Colossal Cave

• LISP stands for: Lots of Irrelevant Sets of Parentheses.
  • Anonymous

• Only Lisp gods are omnipotent.
  • Anonymous

• In an attempt on making a program language where you shorten everything and make it as small as possible, I suddenly found out that I'm only recreating Lisp without the parentheses.
  • Anonymous

• Lisp is an ideal preprocessor for the language of your choice; ECL is an awesome C preprocessor. I assume that ABCL also finally brings a decent preprocessor, and macros, to Java...
  • An anonymous IRC user

Disturbingly, one putatively-reliable source for one of these gives this page as its only citation. Let's stamp out spurious "quotes"! 121a0012 05:19, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Non-notables

• There are no average Lisp programmers. We are the Priesthood. Offerings of incense or cash will do.
  • Kenny Tilton, "Re: Comparing development effort : Lisp and functional languages versus Java.", Usenet article <3C2FCDF6.FB981BAD@nyc.rr.com> (2001-12-31)

Exiling this one until someone can come up with a reason this fellow should be considered notable. Feel free to delete after a week or so. 121a0012 05:36, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

Also:

• Just because we Lisp programmers are better than everyone else is no excuse for us to be arrogant.
  • Erann Gat

• You seem (in my (humble) opinion (which doesn't mean much)) to be (or possibly could be) more of a Lisp programmer (but I could be (and probably am) wrong).
  • kimos at bash.org

121a0012 05:39, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

• Common Lisp is politics, not art.
  • Scott Fahlman

• Lisp is the red pill.
  • John Fraser, comp.lang.lisp comp.lang.lisp archive

• We all know that Lisp is the best language around, but in the hands of most it becomes like that scene in Fantasia when Mickey Mouse gets the wand.
  • Dino Dai Zovi, via Matasano Chargen

• I can't escape the sensation that I have already been thinking in Lisp all my programming career, but forcing the ideas into the constraints of bad languages, which explode those ideas into a bewildering array of details, most of which are workarounds for the language.
  • Kaz Kylheku

• Programming in Lisp is like playing with the primordial forces of the universe. It feels like lightning between your fingertips. No other language even feels close.
  • Glenn Ehrlich

121a0012 05:53, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

• No [programming] language feels more natural than Lisp. There's a real sense that while Python was invented by a brilliant programmer, Lisp is built into of the structure of the Universe.
  • Paul Rubin, comp.lang.python, 2003-10-18

Unsourced

• Lisp ... made me aware that software could be close to executable mathematics.
  • L. Peter Deutsch

See ACM Fellow Profile L. Peter Deutsch. --Pi zero (talk) 12:20, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

• Lisp isn't a language, it's a building material.
  • Alan Kay

• LISP has survived for 21 years because it is an approximate local optimum in the space of programming languages
  • John McCarthy (1980)

• Schemer: "Buddha is small, clean, and serious." Lispnik: "Buddha is big, has hairy armpits, and laughs."
  • Nikodemus Siivola

• Lisp is a programmer amplifier.
  • Martin Rodgers (first said by Chuck Moore about Forth)

• In Lisp, if you want to do aspect-oriented programming, you just do a bunch of macros and you're there. In Java, you have to get Gregor Kiczales to go out and start a new company, taking months and years and try to get that to work. Lisp still has the advantage there, it's just a question of people wanting that.
  • Peter Norvig

• Including Common Lisp. [Addendum to Greenspun's Tenth Rule, see above]
  • Robert Morris

• The key to performance is elegance, not battalions of special cases.
  • Jon Bentley and Douglas McIlroy