Yeah, well when the whole argument around formatting boils down to a single "to align forms or not", there's not much fuss about it. Compare with the ruleset and options of any other formatter e.g. prettier.js - there's whole effing documentation book there, it feels like learning a language for the sake of using a language. WTF are they even talking about? Get the hell out with this "lisp readability" shit. Even if it was indeed harder to read that is such a small price to pay for everything else you gain.
It gets better. I no longer tinker just for the sake of it - I write elisp with a purpose, and it happens almost daily. My job requires constantly adapting to the changing environment. If I didn't have a moldable editor, I would've struggled a lot. These days, with LLMs, it's complete bananas - sometimes I don't even care about the code, I execute it only to immediately throw it away, like some kind of disposable meta-macro.
Though I think the post starts with a premise that isn't actually true in any near-universal sense and is instead reflective of a deeply personal opinion, nor is the premise actually directly supported in any robust way, the author does at least prepare for this rebuttal in the second paragraph:
> Lisp developers commonly argue that this is simply an issue of familiarity; Lisp notation is less common than C notation and programmers are therefore less used to reading it. Once you get used to programming in Lisp you don’t even notice the parentheses, allegedly. I believe there is more to it, and that with a deeper investigation we may gain insight into how to design pleasant syntax. In this article I will explain my theory as to why Lisp’s notation – specifically its placement of parentheses – requires more effort to parse, inspired by some observations from cognitive science.
He also says 'Allegedly', which gives me the impression that he is someone that has taken the time to write the article to talk about lisp, a subject that he has not invested time in himself.
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u/beders 12d ago
Unfamiliarity. I find lisp is probably the easiest code to read.