The 12-Step Program for Lispers
Thu, 5 Dec 2024
Posted in good fun for my lisp-loving friends.
1. Admit Powerlessness: Accept that you're powerless over parentheses, and that your code has become unmanageable due to excessive nesting.
2. Higher Order Function: Come to believe that a Higher Order Function greater than yourself could restore you to sanity-or at least bring your code to a level of elegance.
3. Pass the Lambda: Make a decision to turn your will and your code over to the care of Lambda Expressions.
4. Parenthetical Inventory: Make a searching and fearless inventory of all your parentheses. Don't forget the closing ones.
5. Confess to Emacs: Admit to Emacs, to yourself, and to another Lisp expression, the exact nature of your wrongs - and your incorrect indentations.
6. Recursive Readiness: Become entirely ready to have Higher Order Functions remove all these defects of structure.
7. Macro Intervention: Humbly ask the Macros to remove your shortcomings and replace them with reusable code snippets.
8. List of Wrongs: Make a list of all expressions you've wronged, and become willing to close their parentheses properly.
9. Direct Recursion: Make direct recursion to such expressions whenever possible, except when to do so would cause an infinite loop.
10. Continual Inventory: Continue to take a list inventory, and when you're wrong, promptly admit it and refactor.
11. Meditative Coding: Seek through let and defun to improve your conscious contact with Lambda as you understand it, praying only for knowledge of its will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Spread the S-Expression: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, try to carry this message to other programmers and to practice these principles in all your codebases.
Remember, the road to Lisp enlightenment is paved with parentheses - may yours always be balanced!