merits of Lisp vs Python

[Neil Cerutti]

On 2006-12-13, josephoswaldgg at hotmail.com
<josephoswald at gmail.com> wrote:
> Try reading again. In Lisp, you use () and *your editor*
> automatically indents according to the universal standard, or
> you leave it sloppy until other folks reading your code
> convince you to get a proper programming editor. Indentation
> does not get out of sync with semantics because the editor
> virtually never misses parentheses that the Lisp compiler sees.
> Expressions keep the same meaning even if you have to start
> breaking them across lines, etc.

Yes, it's the same way in Python. Of course, not everything is an
expression in Python, so it's not saying quite as much.

> In Python, you group in your mind, and press indentation keys
> to make it happen in your editor. The editor cannot help that
> much, because it cannot read your mind. White space screwups in
> copy-paste cannot be fixed by the editor automatically, because
> it cannot read the original programmer's mind, and you have to
> fix it manually, and risk screwing it up.

It is very easy a manual process, possibly as simple as selecting
the correct s-expr and pasting it into the right place in your
code.

-- 
Neil Cerutti