merits of Lisp vs Python

[Anders J. Munch]

Rob Thorpe wrote:
 > Anders J. Munch wrote:
 >> Really?  So how do you write a portable program in CL, that is to
 >> run for unbounded lengths of time?
 >
 > You can't.
 >
 > The thing about the spec not defining GC is almost a bit of humour.
 > No-one would use an implementation with no GC.
 >
 > The issue with specifying it is: How would you do it?  The memory
 > used by a program is an aspect of the language implementation and
 > the system the program is running on, so how can it be defined in a
 > useful way?

Let u(t) be the actual memory used by the program at time t.
Let r(t) be the size of reachable memory at time t.

Require that u(t) is a member of O(t -> max{t'<=t: r(t')})

There. That wasn't so hard, was it?

- Anders