Re: What makes elisp fun ?

[Michael Heerdegen <michael_heerdegen@web.de>]

Jean-Christophe Helary <jean.christophe.helary@gmail.com> writes:

> So, besides for the fact that elisp is the Emacs extension language,
> what makes you enthusiastic about it and want to program in it? What
> makes elisp fun for you ?

Lisp programs are represented as Lisp objects (lists).  You can
manipulate them with ordinary means of the language just like any other
list. You can do this with macros.  That's what's making Lisp and it's
macros unique, among its semantical simplicity: It's a progammable
programming language, and the meta programming language is the same
language again.

Emacs offers a perfect programming environment for Elisp, and OTOH is
itself programmable in Elisp.  These three aspects form a unique triad
that you can find nowhere else.  No "besides" needed.

But besides... If you look only at the language Emacs Lisp, it is
probably not much cooler than other Lisps.  It has some weaknesses even,
though there has been improvements in the last time (introduction of
lexical binding for example).

The most important point for most of Elisp developers is probably that
they can do something useful for real-life with their language (or
hobby), something they can use personally.  That you program stuff for
an Editor makes Elisp quite interesting, because you do stuff with it
that you probably don't do with other Lisps.  If you want to count
Fibonacci numbers, you still can use Scheme...

And you can do all this in very cool ways, because you can do it with a
Lisp!  For example, I recently discovered that you can do very cool
things with streams (aka delayed lists) (they are not built in, but hey,
you have a programmable programming language, so they have been added
with very few lines Elisp).  Elisp makes it possible to invent very cool
stuff in very cool ways, and other people may want use your work.  Elisp
let's you be very creative.


Michael.