Programming Languages YET AGAIN (was Re: How to add reports into Gnucash)

[Mike or Penny Novack]

>What makes Lisp tough is trying to learn it with a mindset derived from 
>completely different kinds of languages.  Kind of like trying to learn 
>Japanese while insisting on using English grammar on it.
>  
>
If you are already familiar with a programming language that CAN be used 
as a purely "functional" language even though it is normally used as a 
"procedural" language you COULD learn the new way of thinking without 
having to also be learning a new syntax. But I am not sure whether that 
would make it harder or easier. Perhaps the new syntax would help your 
brain with the "this is really different" issue.

Fairly early on in my learning C after some discussion about what sort 
of a language was it (really) got challenged to rewrite a small C 
program from the usual "imperative" form (how C is normally used) into a 
purely "functional" program with no imperative statements. Yes possible 
to do. But then I already had some familiarity with functional languages 
like LISP.

Michael

PS: I am not sure English to Japanese (which I don't know) is an extreme 
enough example of "different grammar" (does Japanese have nouns and 
verbs and adjectives, etc as separate elements?.). Perhaps more like 
English to one of the American Indian languages that does not even have 
these as separable elements.