Python's Lisp heritage

[Patrick W]

"James J. Besemer" <jb at cascade-sys.com> writes:

> 5. Finally, I think the problem here is that we're all making
> passionate, definitive statements about items that ultimately really
> boil down to matters of personal preference.

Sounds nice, but it's just not true. In Lisp's case, there are
technical issues related to syntax that go way beyond personal
preference or aesthetics.

Anyone who wants to follow this up and really *learn* something,
instead of listening to a bunch of turkeys arguing about it with
varying degrees of cluelessness, take a look at this book (free,
online, pdf or postscript). Find out for yourselves.  Spend 20 minutes
on it. You'd have to be brain dead beyond redemption to /not/ find
this interesting.

        http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisptext.html

The first three chapters contain a lot of ideas that many Pythonistas
will relate to. The rest of the book takes you into territory that
Python (or any other non-Lisp-related language) does not even attempt
to take you. (If you've never been exposed to these ideas, you can't
really have much idea of what you're missing because you won't find
parallels anywhere else).