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I'm not sure what advantages a language in this form would have. Why bother mandating that it be stored like this in some way? Storing programs as text like we do now would enable a tool to display code just as you suggest, just check out the many code-to-html tools that are available.

I'm also not sure why I'd care that my tool parses the code to do those things for me, nor why having my brain parse the code matters in particular. If you're arguing for Lisp's "code as AST" syntax, well, that's fine by me, but I don't think it's a neccesity. Macros work best with sexps, it's true, but I've never found, say, Ruby's metaprogramming to be wanting for Lisp-style macros.

Also, I'm firmly against the One True Language way of thinking. See, for instance, Python vs. Ruby as a great example of why nobody will ever be happy with One Language to Rule Them All. They're so close to each other, yet their small differences cause so much argument between the two camps.



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