You can implement the functional aspects of lisp in almost any language, however S-expressions are only present in a very limited number of programming languages.
Ask HN: Am I missing the Lisp magic?
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Re: Ask HN: Am I missing the Lisp magic?
#12If you are looking at the ))))) you are looking at the wrong place. It's like placing your attention on the } } } } in C. Look at the opening parenthesis instead, and more importantly the indentation . The benefit of S-expressions (lisp syntax) is that they make it easy to work with "code as data" instead of "code as text". This in turn makes it easy enough to generate code and define new forms of expression that peo…
How often is it important to treat code as data (in general) and would you say it makes things less complex than a C-like language?
How 'often'? Either all the time or very rarely, depending on your perspective. You wouldn't have 50% of your codebase treating code as data, because only a few lines of macros could define an entire new paradigm on top of what's included in common lisp. Those macros could be used pervasively throughout the codebase; they could be used often but written rarely.