You're displaying what many people call the "Lisp Programmer's Disease". The symptoms are noting that good mathematical representations (like prefix) are extremely important (they aren't always), that recursion is better than iteration (it isn't objectively better), and that purity of syntax is a goal instead of a tool.

I don't suggest a person stop with Lambda Calculus/Lisp, though. Just that it's such an important base for everything else that it's almost reckless for people not to start there. A generation of programmers have grown up starting with languages like BASIC, C, and Java, which have little surface similarity with Lambda notation. Certainly, these languages expand on the underlieing principles in useful and interesting ways, but it's important to know where it all starts.

I myself started with BASIC, and had no idea about any of this Lambda Calculus stuff before I was well into a career with Perl. I think that's a real shame, and I know I'm not alone in learning that way.

"There is no shame in being self-taught, only in not trying to learn in the first place." -- Atrus, Myst: The Book of D'ni.

In reply to Re^3: Perl as one's first programming language by hardburn
in thread Perl as one's first programming language by amarquis

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