Re: XML as a transition to s-expr

[Bruce Lewis <address@hidden>]

I tried to carefully explain in a previous message that I'm not
interested in replacing XML for text markup.  I want to leverage
people's experience with XML/HTML to ease the transition into
general programming with s-exprs.  With BRL, people still use (X)HTML
for static text, but use s-exprs for the dynamic parts.  I thought this
was clear when ASP and PHP came up.

This thread continues to discuss replacing XML with s-exprs for text
markup despite my efforts.  However, this message has relevance:

Paul Graham <paulgraham@yahoo.com> writes:

> Users loved RTML.  That was what taught me for sure
> (as the Dylan guys hypothesized, and the Python and Ruby 
> guys proved) that the only thing standing between Lisp 
> and even the most novice programmers was the parentheses.

Could you tell us more about this result?  The control group, the ones
who also had the structure editor but were allowed to see the parens,
how deep did the nesting get before they freaked?

If there was no such control group, maybe you've drawn the wrong
conclusion.  Using a structure editor is not meaningfully comparable to
typing in parens without a structure editor.

I think the only thing standing between Lisp (at least Scheme) and the
most novice programmers is an hour with a halfway-decent tutorial.

-- 
<brlewis@[(if (brl-related? message)    ; Bruce R. Lewis
              "users.sourceforge.net"   ; http://brl.sourceforge.net/
              "alum.mit.edu")]>