Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme

[Robin Becker]

In article <gGWhb.200390$hE5.6777507 at news1.tin.it>, Alex Martelli
<aleaxit at yahoo.com> writes
>Jon S. Anthony wrote:
>   ...
>> bombs waiting to go off since they have long standing prior meanins
>> not in any way associated with this type of operation.  OTOH, if you
>> really wanted them, you could define them.
>
>Is it a good thing that you can define "bombs waiting to go off"?
>
>
>>> Python's reply "There should be one-- and preferably only one --
>>> obvious way to do it."
>> 
>> This then is probably the best reason to _not_ use Python for anything
>> other than the trivial.  It has long been known in problem solving
>> (not just computation) that multiple ways of attacking a problem, and
>> shifting among those ways, tends to yield the the better solutions.
>
>One, and preferably only one, of those ways should be the obvious one,
>i.e., the best solution.  There will always be others -- hopefully they'll 
>be clearly enough inferior to the best one, that you won't have to waste
>too much time considering and rejecting them.  But the obvious one
>"may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch".
>
>The worst case for productivity is probably when two _perfectly
>equivalent_ ways exist.  Buridan's ass notoriously starved to death in
>just such a worst-case situation; groups of programmers may not go
>quite as far, but are sure to waste lots of time & energy deciding.
>
>
>Alex
>
I'm not sure when this concern for the one true solution arose, but even
GvR provides an explicit example of multiple ways to do it in his essay
        http://www.python.org/doc/essays/list2str.html

Even in Python there will always be tradeoffs between clarity and
efficiency. 
-- 
Robin Becker