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Originally Posted by mike_bike_kite
The idea of RPN is that you don't need parenthesis however LISP is famous for requiring thousands of the damn things - what gives?
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Let's draw a distinction between the syntax requirements of the language and those of things written in it.
I suspect AutoLISP uses RPN because it's easier to parse when evaluating.
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Modern languages like Java are highly optimised and I find I can write board games like Checkers, Connect 4 or Othello and performance is never a problem - hell you can even write arcade programs in it. No doubt Fortran might be a little quicker but then I also have to factor in the time it takes me to write the programs. I'm not even sure if you can get assemblers these days for computers - I assume that C is the lowest language you could use.
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Oh, you can get assemblers - the Gnu Compiler Suite includes the as assembler, for example. The question is why you might need to use them. Hardware is fast and cheap enough that it it's no longer necessary to write in assembler to get performance, and about the only reason I can see for resorting to it for writing device drivers or for embedded applications.
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I thought whitespace was very clever. I've written a few small languages myself and just wish I had that idea 
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I wouldn't actually try to
code in whitespace, but I was tickled by the idea.
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Dennis