alt Hacker NewsI like Lisp, I’ve used Common Lisp with a passion, but this doesn’t seem like a valid argument for Lisp.
Homoiconicity, as I understand, is that the code is structured data that is easy to programmatically modify, hence allowing Lisp macros. While some might disagree, I see Rust macros as the closest thing that demonstrates homoiconicity in mainstream Algol-based languages, as Rust macros modify the loosely structured token stream to produce new Rust code.
Eval, on the other hand, that’s more of a capability that comes from Lisp’s runtime, which used to be unique when Lisp was thriving, but not anymore — JS, Python, Ruby, all of the runtime-based languages have an eval function. The fact that they are not used as much is more of a security issue, not a capability issue, and I am not sure how having eval can be argued as Lisp being the language of agents.
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A Lisp program that writes a Lisp program really just needs to produce a list of (nested lists) of tokens. A JavaScript program that writes a javascript program needs to generate a string that is syntactically valid JavaScript code. That is a much bigger task than just constructing a (nested) list.
Because Lisp syntax is so much simpler than that of JavaScript etc. it is much easier to avoid errors when generating code. In JavaScript you can use JSON to generate data, but JSON can not carry functions around.
I think this idea makes a lot sense. Instead of making the LLM generate JSON or XML, why not make it generate Lisp, which can carry both programs and data?
> I see Rust macros as the closest thing that demonstrates homoiconicity in mainstream Algol-based languages
I don't know if you consider Elixir mainstream, but IMO their macro system is much closer to lisp's ideal.
Elixir is basically Lisp, but with better syntax, a modern ecosystem, and running on the Beam. Unlike languages like Rust, Elixir's conditionals and function definitions are just calls in the AST, even though the syntax looks mainstream and not like paren soup.