> you can't quickly tell whether some thing you're looking at is data, a function, or a macro, or what
First of all, there are elements that are unmistakably data: "abc", 123.0E-13, #(1 2 3), :keyword :symbol.
The ambiguity is that a compound expression headed by a symbol could be anything. In order to to be fooled, we just have to read the entire top-level form from the outside in.
Well, that's what language is. For instance, if I'm saying "Bob believes that the Earth is flat", but you only catch my speech starting on at word "the", it looks like I'm saying that the Earth is flat. To get the real meaning (the belief is attributed to Bob), you need the whole sentence.
Or, until you hear the "nai" at the end of a long Japanese sentence, you have no idea that it's going to be negated.
First of all, there are elements that are unmistakably data: "abc", 123.0E-13, #(1 2 3), :keyword :symbol.
The ambiguity is that a compound expression headed by a symbol could be anything. In order to to be fooled, we just have to read the entire top-level form from the outside in.
Well, that's what language is. For instance, if I'm saying "Bob believes that the Earth is flat", but you only catch my speech starting on at word "the", it looks like I'm saying that the Earth is flat. To get the real meaning (the belief is attributed to Bob), you need the whole sentence.
Or, until you hear the "nai" at the end of a long Japanese sentence, you have no idea that it's going to be negated.