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Hofstadter on Lisp (1983)

Hofstadter on Lisp: Atoms and Lists, re-printed in Metamagical Themas. - gist:5139396

Running a program of this sort is like launching a new space probe, untested: you can't possibly have anticipated all the things that might go wrong, and so all you can do is sit back and watch, hoping that it will work. This makes many people shudder at first - and yet once you get used to their characteristic appearance, Lisp expressions become remarkably intuitive, even, charming, to the eye, especially when pretty printed, which means that a careful indentation scheme is followed that reveals their logical structure. I thought I would end this column with a newsbreak about a freshly discovered beast - the homely Glazunkian porpuquine, so called because it is found only on the island of Glazunkia (claimed by Upper Bitbo, though it is just off the coast of Burronymede).

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