What does Python fix?

[Henrik Motakef]

Pekka Niiranen <krissepu at vip.fi> writes:

>>Shrug. Lisp trades one form of complexity for another. By reducing
>>the solution to a universal grammar, they increase the symbolic load
>>on the user, who is awash in a page full of very similar symbols.
>>This is intimidating in particular to novices, for whatever reason,
>>who are instantly alienated. Without sweeping in novices, you lack
>>a grass roots movement, and without a grass roots, a language is dead.
>>
>>The parts of lisp that really matter to the community have since
>>been adopted in part by many other languages. Lisp is dead. Long live
>>Lisp.

> Sure, Python's syntax looks nice, but to use another language to get
> performance (i.e speed) ? That sucks.

Let's not forget that Python's syntax (most of all the significance of
whitespace) is considered strange at least by about all novices. In
both cases - significant whitespace and lots of irritating superflous
parentheses - people don't just get used to it, but tend to like it
after a while.

Another rather cool feature of lisp that python lacks are macros, btw,
or in general the uniform handling of code and data.

> I have a feeling Python might renew peoples interest to various lisps.

That would be nice. The one thing lisp lacks is a huge community,
manifesting itself in lots of ready-to-use libraries, tutorials etc.

I guess the mere existence and visibility of Python (and Ruby, for
example) is a Good Thing - there's choice again, and when people are
thinking about what language they should use, it's not just the
question "should I use C or Perl" (or, depending on the platform you
are socialized on, "should I use C++ or Visual Basic") any more - it
is more obvious that there are a lot of high-level languages one could
use, and that they differ significantly. That doesn't only help the
highly visible languages like Python, but also the more obscure ones
like Lisp, or Objective Caml for example.

> After studying Python for 2 years I myself have
> recently switched to DrScheme because I have no interest
> relearning C to write extensions to Python.
> 
> What an eye opener it has been to study scheme...

Ack. Learning Lisp (I prefer Common Lisp over Scheme myself, but IMHO
you should know both) is something any programmer should do
sometimes. Of course, learning and using Python isn't a bad thing,
either...

Regards
Henrik