merits of Lisp vs Python

[Kay Schluehr]

Paul Rubin wrote:
> Robert Brown <bbrown at speakeasy.net> writes:
> > Does this make Lisp "less dynamic" than Python?  Espen would say it's not
> > less dynamic, but rather that a similar level of dynamism is achieved in
> > Common Lisp via well defined interfaces.  The compiler knows the interfaces,
> > so it can do a better job optimizing the code.
>
> I'd say Python is more dynamic in the sense that the Python runtime
> system has to actually concern itself about the dynamism all the time
> in practice, i.e. on every object method invocation.  The Lisp runtime
> only has to think about it when the application calls specific
> functions in those interfaces.  The rest of the time, it can use
> various optimizations like compile-time analysis and caching.  I do
> not consider this contrast to be in Python's favor.

The main complaint I have myself is that the CPython runtime can't even
deal with static information presumed that it is available. Psyco
indeed can do it but it is a plugin and it is not supported and
understood by the whole core development team but only by Armin Rigo
himself. Instead of making up the CPython runtime for better support of
Psyco and related approaches Armin had to start PyPy ( this happened
more than 3 years ago! ) Now we are in the situation that parts of
Python are also RPython which means that their can be analyzed
statically but we need PyPy to compile them into CPython extensions.
This is really weird.