Python syntax in Lisp and Scheme

Ingvar Mattsson ingvar at cathouse.bofh.se
Thu Oct 9 05:31:51 EDT 2003


"Karl A. Krueger" <kkrueger at example.edu> writes:

[SNIP]
> Incidentally, I regard objections to "the whitespace thing" in Python
> and objections to "the parenthesis thing" in Lisp as more or less the
> same.  People who raise these objections are usually just saying "Ick!
> This looks so unfamiliar to me!" in the language of rationalizations.
> I guess a philosopher would say that I am an emotivist about notation
> criticisms.

My main problem with "indentation controls scoping" is taht I've
actually had production python code die because of whitespace being
mangled in cutting&pasting between various things. It looks a bit odd,
but after having written BASIC, Pascal, APL, Forth, PostScript, Lisp,
C and Intercal looking "odd" only requires looking harder. Killing a
production system due to whitespace-mangling isn't.

And, yes, I probably write more Python code than lisp code in an
average week.

//Ingvar
-- 
Ingvar Mattsson; ingvar at hexapodia.net;
You can get further with a kind word and a 2x4
than you can with just a kind word.             Among others, Marcus Cole




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