The &quot;Neo in the matrix&quot; thing, i think, is the &quot;lisp enlightenment experience&quot; under another name.<p>Trying not to be some smug lisp weenie about it, I&#x27;m going to try to put my own experience into normal english.  It happened for me somewhere around the 6-12 month mark of daily lisp study&#x2F;coding.<p>You usually start out learning lisp like other languages: you&#x27;re just trying to learn the syntax of various commands and the quirks of how everything fits together of the concepts (if you&#x27;ve learnt another language) that you probably already know.  And a big part of this is laying the foundation of a deep understanding of linked lists, cons cells, cars and cdrs.  And after that, you start learning about the identation style available to you as well.  And right now, its just another language.<p>Then one day, you wake up, and you look at code, and some switch you weren&#x27;t even aware of has flicked in your brain, and it all looks different.  Mature lispers read&#x2F;structure code subconsciously using both symbols and the indentation style to convey real information about the structure of a program, which is why you can really mess with their heads if you mess yours up too much.  But there&#x27;s a difference between being told you can do it this way, and the practice that actually makes you do it, because its not a conscious thing.<p>Anyway, the reason lispers &quot;think they&#x27;re neo in the matrix&quot; is because the mental effect this has on you is not unlike that scene towards the end of the matrix where Neo looks down the hallway and his perception of the thing he&#x27;s been interacting with this entire time just fundamentally changes.  Its no longer writing code, that is to say, strings of text.  Its interacting with and perceiving the very structure of the programs themselves.<p>And it is a real psychological phenomenon.  It makes you really happy, and its why lispers talk about it.  It makes you want to go and shake your neighbour and be all like &quot;Oh my god, I get it, do you see this!&quot;...and of course they don&#x27;t.  They see scribbles on the screen.<p>The funny thing is, they always say they&#x27;re Neo in the matrix, which i understand is cooler, partly because that final scene captures the phenomenon of what it feels like, but its arguably summed up in a more lackadaisical way by the character Cypher in one of his quotes from the same movie:<p>&quot;You get used to it, though. Your brain does the translating. I don&#x27;t even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, redhead. Hey uh, you want a drink?&quot;