List processing

I can no longer remember where I got this but it’s quite good, and surprising, coming from a Perl geek like MJD.

[IWE] Why Lisp macros are cool, a Perl perspective

But a bigger advantage is that it makes it possible to write Lisp programs that reliably generate and transform Lisp source code. If you’re not used to Lisp, it’s hard to imagine how tremendously useful this is. People who come from the Perl and C world have a deep suspicion of source code transformation, because it’s invariably unreliable.

It really is all just lists, which is the simplicity that gives Lisp such power and also makes people suspect that they’re missing something. As “Paul” is quoted in the article saying:

Paul told me that he liked Lisp *because* there was hardly any syntax to remember, and it was all simple. “Everything’s an expression,” he said. “Every expresion (sic) gets evaluated. If you don’t want it evaluated, you put a quote on it. Simple.”

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