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

[Erik Max Francis]

Jacek Generowicz wrote:

> Robin Munn <rmunn at pobox.com> writes:
>
> > What I'm going off of here is my memory of having to count and
> > re-count
> > parentheses as I was writing to make sure that I was putting in the
> > right number of closing parens to finish a structure.
> 
> To me, this sounds very much like "... my memory of having to count
> and recount all the spaces, when programming in Python, to make sure
> that my blocks lined up."

Indeed, I think it's highly ironic that people are complaining about
parenthesis-counting when it comes to Python, because "I don't want to
be keeping track of whitespace indentation" is one of the key
anti-Python sentiments (from people who have never used it).  The fact
that we're not complaining about this in Python now, of course, is
because it's a non-issue -- you _don't_ have to do such things, your
editor does it for you.  For Lisp programming, it's exactly the same
thing.

-- 
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