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From: Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com>
Subject: Re: Why I can't use Lisp.
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Date: Mon, 5 Aug 2002 08:15:19 GMT
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Andreas Bogk <andr...@andreas.org> writes:

> Kent M Pitman <pit...@world.std.com> writes:
> 
> > Processors that are supposed to take
> >  '(I AM NOT FEELING WELL TODAY)
> > as an argument but have to take
> >  #{#"I", #"AM", #"NOT", #"FEELING", #"WELL", #"TODAY"}
> > are just not, to me offering the same capability.
> 
> Well, neither expression syntax is one a naive user would choose to
> communicate with a supposed-to-be-intelligent program.  Here's the
> Dylan code that takes a string, and returns a collection of symbols:
> 
>   let (#rest words) = split("\\s", line)
>   map(curry(as, <symbol>), words);
> 
> Voila, an improvement over using s-expressions as the input of Eliza.
> 
> > That small degree of willful failure to do user engineering means that 
> > interactive experimentation is virtually ruled out.  IMO, no one is going
> 
> Hm, don't think so.  But I've already noticed that my mileage does
> vary :).

But you've made my point.

You have turned them in to string processing applications.

To be honest, I don't think anyone who starts with split("\\s" line)
is going to target symbol as their final datatype.  I bet they'll
write it using strings.

Further, the application involves even more string processing to get
 "x+y*z"
to work.  One of the virtues of starting with s-expressions was that 
it allowed the people with this idea to skip to the part where they 
were working on the idea, unimpeded by the UI issues that would be needed
in order to get to a workable representation. (+ x (* y z)) is "good enough"
even if "x+y*z" is arguably more natural to some.  But having to write a
parser for "x+y*z" is annoying.  And it's DOUBLY annoying because you
know the Dylan language HAS such a parser and does not reveal it to the
end user as an ordinary part of doing business.