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

[Greg Ewing]

Pascal Costanza wrote:

> Greg Ewing wrote:
>> Python still goes one better, because (for user-defined
>> methods at least) you can supply arguments by keyword even
>> if they *haven't* been declared that way!
> 
> No problem.
> 
> (defun paint (&key on at &allow-other-keys)
>    ...)


No, I was talking about the way you can do

   def f(x, y):
      ...

and call it as

   f(y = 42, x = 17)

In other words, you don't have to know when you write
the function that you're going to want to call it with
keywords later -- you just do it.

I use this a lot when a function has one or more arguments
that are booleans. I find it a lot more readable to
always pass them using keywords.

-- 
Greg Ewing, Computer Science Dept,
University of Canterbury,	
Christchurch, New Zealand
http://www.cosc.canterbury.ac.nz/~greg