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Comment by sabya | Hacker News Reader

>You can imagine Lisp grammar like Pac Man eating the dots: ᗧ••••, and there is no ghosts here. Pac Man is the function in Lisp, and the dots are arguments. After Pac Man eat up all the dots (the function is executed with all these arguments), it becames a dot: • . and a dot is able to be eaten by another Pac Man.

Simplest explanation of Lisp grammar I've read!

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It's funny until you look at XML so many love and wonder why they hated LISP syntax at same time.

http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html

People loved XML syntax?

My impression was that the only thing wrong with XML was the syntax (hence the JSON revolution). After all, apart from syntax, possibly some of the ill-advised "external element" stuff ... I think XML is strictly better in every meaningful sense than JSON.

They did. Especially web design crowd. Its syntax and tech are crap, though, compared to what came before it. Another lesson never learned by mainstream IT. That amount of developer and user effort would've achieved more results by using superior technology.

Already gave a nice comparison here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10044598

I'm guessing because they already knew HTML, so it seemed familiar and easy to learn to them. Similar to how many programmers prefer crazy (but familiar) C-like syntax (C, C++, C#, Java, PHP, Javascript, ...) and dismiss anything that looks remotely unfamiliar even if much saner (Lisp, Pascal, ML, ...).

Exactly! You're getting it. Part of it, but a big part.

Brett Victor had a similar idea involving something wilder http://worrydream.com/AlligatorEggs/

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