Software but a Bubble

"Is it possible that software is not like anything else, that it is meant to be discarded: that the whole point is to always see it as a soap bubble? -- Alan J. Perlis, as quoted in Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs

As one would expect from its goals, artificial intelligence research generates many significant programming problems. In other programming cultures this spate of problems spawns new languages.  Indeed, in any very large programming task a useful organizing principle is to control and isolate traffic within the task modules via the invention of language.  These languages tend to become less primitive as one approaches the boundaries of the system where we humans interact most often.  As a result, such systems contain complex language-processing functions replicated many times.  Lisp has such a simple syntax and semantics that parsing can be treated as an elementary task.  Thus parsing technology plays almost no role in Lisp programs, and the construction of language processors is rarely an impediment to the rate of growth and change of large Lisp systems.  Finally it is this very simplicity of syntax and semantics that is responsible for the burden and freedom borne by all

We toast the Lisp programmer who pens his thoughts within nests of parentheses.