PEP0238 lament

[Gareth McCaughan]

Stephen Horne wrote:

[I said, about his suggestion that we should have a language
whose grammar can be changed:]
>> It's existed for years. It's called Lisp, and it's
>> the reason why Python is only the second best programming
>> language in the world <0.5 wink>.
> 
> I've used it, and it *isn't* what I'm thinking of - I want a human
> readable language ;-)

I sympathize, but note that Lisp becomes much more
readable with experience, even for humans :-).
And there's a *reason* for its peculiar syntax,
which is deeply connected to the very property
you want: all this code-transformation stuff is
much, much easier when the structure of the code
is extremely regular.

You might want to look into Dylan, which has a
more conventional syntax and a pretty powerful
macro system.

> The only big worry in principle is that I think a more
> functional/logical style would be better for the compile-time language

Are you really sure you don't want Lisp? :-)

-- 
Gareth McCaughan  Gareth.McCaughan at pobox.com
.sig under construc