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Comment by shakna | Hacker News Reader

> You can do that more efficiently with any ML language.

So first you say Lisp is useless in compsci because of the existence of "rust, c and idris", and now its pointless to use it because of ML?

> Dude, that notation is not original to lisp...

Firstly: Have you actually looked at an MD file? [0] RTL is a Lisp dialect.

Secondly: The first paper on S-Expressions appeared in November, 1997. McCarthy's first paper on what would become Lisp in 1982. I'm aware of no language, and can find reference to no language, that used that notation before Lisp did, so yes it is original to Lisp.

[0] https://gcc.gnu.org/git/?p=gcc.git;a=blob_plain;f=gcc/config...

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> So first you say Lisp is useless in compsci because of the existence of "rust, c and idris", and now its pointless to use it because of ML?

Idris and Rust are ML descendants and C helps you to learn the basics of low-level programming. Lisp on the other hand won't teach you anything. How hard is this to understand?

> Secondly: The first paper on S-Expressions appeared in November, 1997.

That was just a draft of an RFC which never got approved. S-Expressions are MUCH older - it's "Polish Notation" invented by Jan Łukasiewicz in 1924

> McCarthy's first paper on what would become Lisp in 1982.

Lisp was specified in 1958.

> I'm aware of no language, and can find reference to no language, that used that notation before Lisp did, so yes it is original to Lisp.

1. It's not about who used that notation but who invented it - not McCarthy; 2. that notation is practically useless for programming languages but they're good for ASTs.

> Lisp on the other hand won't teach you anything. How hard is this to understand?

Difficult when the definitive compsci course, Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs starts, and ends, with Lisp.

> S-Expressions are MUCH older - it's "Polish Notation" invented by Jan Łukasiewicz in 1924

No. Polish notation, as described by Łukasiewicz, is:

> I came upon the idea of a parenthesis-free notation in 1924

Polish notation has a strict set of precedence rules, and no parentheses. At all.

S-Expressions contain Polish notation, but is a superset that allows you to specify arguments in a less painful precedence than Polish notation, and with variadic arguments, which is not possible in Polish notation.

> that notation is practically useless for programming languages but they're good for ASTs.

Several decades of computer science disagree with you.

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