Joel Moses On Apl And Lisp

"APL is like a diamond. It has a beautiful crystal structure; all of its parts are related in a uniform and elegant way. But if you try to extend this structure in any way - even by adding another diamond - you get an ugly kludge. LISP, on the other hand, is like a ball of mud. You can add any amount of mud to it and it still looks like a ball of mud." -- JoelMoses

Funny... adding diamonds to APL did not seem like a kludge to me. -- RandyMacDonald

Nobody bothered answering this question. After some Googling around, I found out that the diamond character '◇' allowed multiple statements per line of text; it was APL's semicolon. --SamuelFalvo?

One of the characteristics of APL was its use of weird characters not available on a typical keyboard. A diamond would be quite appropriate.

Was that intended as a compliment or a criticism of LISP[1], or perhaps a back-handed compliment? [1]aka Lisp and known here as LispLanguage

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