Ruby by Example

Lisp

As one of Ruby’s most prominent ancestors, Lisp deserves some space in this section. Lisp has been called “the most intelligent way to misuse a computer.”^[40] It is properly understood as a family of languages or a language specification, rather than a single language. It is also diverse enough to resist many classification attempts, but for our purposes, the Lisps can be thought of mainly as functional languages with weak, dynamic typing. Renowned Lisper Paul Graham describes “What Made Lisp Different” at http://paulgraham.com/diff.html, and it’s interesting to note that Ruby shares all of these features except for Lisp’s peculiar syntax.

Lisp’s syntax (or lack thereof) is probably its most noteworthy feature, at first glance. Lisp code consists ...