Does this article put forward an assumption that the Lisp is less abstract than "Turing machines"? If so, I'd like someone to explain to me how, because this article confused me completely. And it's the fourth time I read this thing today. lm? Other CS mofos? ;) Arse shelter/background: Yes, I know who's Alan Kay. I'm not questioning his authority or contributions, just don't get what he's on about. My own experience with Lisp can be boiled down to "finished this thing and remained indifferent". I'm no expert and know it, but I'm also extremely sceptical about stuff proclaimed by Lispers.
I don't think he does? Perhaps one could say that Lisp is less abstract than lambda calculus in the sense that it has primitive operations on integers and whatnot. I also don't think he's arguing that it's more abstract, just that the notation makes it easier for humans to reason about programs, much in the same way that arithmetic is easier with Arabic numbers than Roman numerals. Or how currying and partial function application is common in Haskell because the syntax makes those operations painless.