What can you do in LISP that you can't do in Python

[Alex Martelli]

<ssthapa at classes.cs.uchicago.edu> wrote in message
news:slrn9g3u63.jnp.ssthapa at hepcat.telocity.com...
> Alex Martelli <aleaxit at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >Python, Scheme, Common Lisp, and a zillion other languages (including
> >C, C++, Java, Fortran, Cobol, PL/I, Ada, Perl, Basic, ...) are all
> >"Turing Complete" (to within the physical limitations imposed by
> >finiteness of computer hardware), so you will never find anything
> >that you "could do in X and couldn't do in Y" for any X and Y in
> >this set of languages.
    ...
>     If the stronger version of the C-T thesis is incorrect then it is
possible
> for programs in one language to compute things that a program in another
> language can't compute.  However, both languages would share a common
subset
> of functions that can be computed.

It's possible, I guess.  Still, since it's conceptually easy
to design an interpreter for any of these languages I listed
in terms of any of the others, their equivalence is easy to
see even if Church and Turing had it all wrong:-).


Alex