I tried understanding the rules but actually using it helped me to get it. Especially when I was using a parser combinator to parse a programming language.
Hey Alan, you once said that lisp is the greatest single programming language ever designed. Recently, with all the emergence of statically typed languages like Haskell and Scala, has that changed? Why do you think after being around for so long, lisp isn't as popular as mainstream languages like Java, C or Python? And lastly, what are your thoughts on MIT's switch to use Python instead of Scheme to teach their undergraduate CS program?
> Yesterday a lead programmer at a major financial institution told me that he liked that style so much, he'd incorporated it into his company's OCaml system, and they use it in their production systems (lots of high-volume trading).