>If you understand how compilers work, what's really going on is not so much that Lisp has a strange syntax as that Lisp has no syntax. You write programs in the parse trees that get generated within the compiler when other languages are parsed.
Listen to this man. Anyone who studies a dead language for “real-world gain” will probably end up disappointed.
The only real reason to learn is so you can read old books in that language. And you might get a few points of social prestige, but that alone generally won't make up for the hours and years you put into it.
>isn't being held captive behind closed doors waiting for Sanskrit-speaking liberators
Over-dramatizing the other guy's statement does not constitute a response.
Even ignoring the religious angle, Sanskrit was the primary language of literature, science and philosophy in India for over a millennium. Surely a person might want to read some of that without being employed as a researcher.
> Being an adult is being able to handle responsibilities and take care of yourself in the world. Being a grown-up is being a prig whose soul died years ago.
A fair opinion, but I don't think the book makes that distinction.
The prince keeps heckling the narrator even when he's trying to fix his plane and head back to civilization. How is trying to escape near-certain death a "grown-up" thing, as opposed to being an "adult" thing?
I read it recently, and found it to be Atlas Shrugged for 5-year-olds. The only point of the story is to say: "YOU, the reader, being a child, are so much better and smarter than all these grown-up sheeple!!"
All told, I like the version at the end of this page[1] much better.
Needless to say, every participant was from Pune...