Why is Python popular, while Lisp and Scheme aren't?

[Erik Max Francis]

Johannes Grødem wrote:

> * Carl Banks <imbosol at vt.edu>:
> 
> > Python represents logical nesting the same way human read it, by
> > indentation.  Lisp repesents all nesting with parentheses, [...]
> 
> When you program in Lisp, you (your editor) indents blocks for you,
> which makes it easy to see block structure.  Noone actually manually
> count parentheses.  (All sane editors support paren-matching.)

Right.  Note that this objection to Lisp is analogous to the objection
that whitespace-insensitive language users (C, C++, Java, Perl, etc.)
often use to discount Python before they've been exposed to it.  "If
it's whitespace sensitive," they say, "I'll be stuck fighting with
indentation to get the results I want."

I'm an emacs user, so the first thing I did when I started fiddling
around with Python is installed python-mode.  Because of that, I have
never once counted spaces, never once had space/tab problems, never once
had a problem indenting/unintending a region, and whenever I've
forgotten the odd colon, good ol' python-mode has made it very clear to
me what the problem was.

The same goes for Lisp (and all its variants, like Scheme).  You might
have to count parentheses if you had to physically write it down with
pencil and paper, but in the real world you'll be using an editor, and
the editor will help you match parentheses and do the gruntwork for you.

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