From: Tony Arcieri Date: 2009-02-26T03:49:27+09:00 Subject: Re: Nexus Programming Language --000e0cd4849421fd7d0463c2b44f Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 11:04 PM, Mike Gold wrote: > > The parentheses are there for power: code is data, data is code. When > evaluated as a language only, putting aside external issues such as > mindshare, it is an objective statement to say that lisp is more > powerful than any language which does not have the code-data > equivalence. Homoiconicity doesn't afford power so much as simplicity. Using parse transformations in Ruby requires learning what the Ruby parser's "sexps" look like, whereas in Lisp you write your code directly in those sexps so there is no disconnect. Once you have the Ruby parser's sexps, the same class of transformations are still available, as they are in any language which allows you to programatically retrieve parser output and invoke the compiler from within the language itself. However, for day-to-day programming tasks I find code in sexp form harder to read (and write) than code in a more complex grammar which is able to express the same idea with fewer tokens and less syntactic noise. Lisp is certainly better optimized for macros, but in my opinion Ruby is better optimized for day-to-day use and readability. -- Tony Arcieri medioh.com --000e0cd4849421fd7d0463c2b44f--