Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
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Subject: Re: Prefix vs. Infix?
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References: <37jo4v$7lm@hobbes.cc.uga.edu> <CyI3Bq.75F@IRO.UMontreal.CA> <393vkc$8op@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>
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Date: Wed, 2 Nov 1994 07:15:04 +0000
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In article <393vkc$8op@uqcspe.cs.uq.oz.au>
           berglas@cs.uq.oz.au "Anthony Berglas" writes:

> The real point, however, is that non Lisp programmers unbiased by
> experience or careful analysis *KNOW* that parenthesis are
> unacceptable, and IMHO this is a major reason that Lisp died.  Syntax
> is always more important than semantics.

I learned to hate infix while using my first (computer) language,
which was Basic. I could never remember the precedence levels.
I now use C, and hate infix even more. At one time, I wrote my
own Forth and Lisp interpreters, just to avoid using infix.

Semantics are more important to me than syntax, within reasonable
limits. While I was still using Basic, and had yet to discover
Forth, I was already playing with ideas like prefix and postfix
notation. The simplicity of the parser appealed to me. I could not
only write the parser with no difficulty (remember, I was still new
to programming back then), but I could read the code it was parsing!

It's ironic that so many people tell me that Lisp and Forth are
"unreadable", and that other languages _aren't_...
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