On Friday, February 06, 2026 11:00:59 AM [email protected] wrote: > * is there somewhere a guide to LISP syntax that makes analogies to > things like Algol or C (or Python, Pascal, or such). (Background: I > originally learned Algol, then was forced to learn Fortran :-(, and then > was exposed to and supposed to learn Lisp, but I never became comfortable > with that. Something that would take (or display) some Lisp code snippets > tanslated into something more like Pascal syntax would help me a lot, I > think)
Update: after writing the above, I found [[https://www.fluentpython.com/extra/beautiful-code/][A Beautiful Piece of Code: lis.py]] which helped a lot, example: <quote> (define (max a b) (if (>= a b) a b)) </quote> With some notes that I've not copied here, now I get it, that is quite clear, e.g., I see the if and >= In my first exposure to Lisp, the instructor spent quite some time (weeks, iirc) dealing with car and cdr, and by that time I had lost interest and pretty much stopped paying attention (even though I did pass the course, maybe even with an A :-)
