When did you first try Lisp seriously, and which Lisp family
member was it?
If AppleScript is a "family member", I guess it
would be 1993. No s-expressions in that language though, so for
reasons better kept to myself, I think the point of no return was
September 2000.
What led you to try Lisp?
I lived in Oslo, Norway.
When the www craze took of, there was this SGML oldtimer that told me
that html was severely broken. I vociferously objected, and it took
me a few years to see how right he had been. Ever since, I've given
his advice some extra thought.
Where did your road originate?
As opposed to most other lispers, I come from higher-level languages -- dropped out of Cobol classes at a business school, started out with Hypertalk, AppleScript, javascript and emacs lisp which aren't that bad, and then downhill from there, through Perl, VBScript, and Java Server Pages.
Don't know any of those languages well enough to say that they suck.
How far have you gotten in your study of Lisp?
Academically, closing in on a masters degree - in Real Life, I hope
I'm better than I think I am.
What do you think of Lisp so far?
It's high level and low level at the same time. Even if the language itself is somewhat irregular, I like how the community strives for the right way of doing things.
I guess I've swallowed the red pill - I have no problem with the mini-languages such as format or loop, and as long as macros can be expanded by emacs, I think the are great for abstractions.
Switch Date 2000 | RtL Erik Naggum