merits of Lisp vs Python

[Paul Rubin]

"Mark Tarver" <dr.mtarver at ukonline.co.uk> writes:
> Thanks;  a quick read of your reference to Norvig's analysis
> 
> http://norvig.com/python-lisp.html
> 
> seems to show that Python is a cut down (no macros) version of Lisp
> with a worse performance.  The only substantial advantage I can see is
> that GUI, and Web libraries are standard.  This confirms my suspicion
> that Lisp is losing out to newbies because of its
> lack of standard support for the things many people want to do.

There is (IMO) some truth to that, but the flavor of Python
programming is not that much like Lisp any more.  Especially with
recent Python releases (postdating that Norvig article) using iterator
and generator objects (basically delayed evaluation streams) more
heavily, Python is getting harder to describe in Lisp terms.  It's
moving more in the direction of Haskell.