merits of Lisp vs Python

[Ken Tilton]

greg wrote:
> Bill Atkins wrote:
> 
>> You're missing Ken's point, which is that in Lisp an s-expression
>> represents a single concept - I can cut out the second form of an IF
>> and know that I'm cutting the entire test-form.
> 
> 
> For selecting a single form, that's true. For
> more than one form (such as selecting some, but
> not all, of the statements in a loop body) it's
> not much different.
> 
> But my point was that I don't find "manually
> reindenting the lines" to be a chore. He made it
> sound like you have to laboriously go through
> and adjust the lines one by one, but it's not
> like that at all. You shift them all at once
> in a block.

It is a gray area. Manually maintaining indentation does not have to be 
a "laborious chore" to slow down development.

I believe it was in the mid 1980s when I turned to the developer sitting 
next to me and said, "I wonder how much time I spend re-tabbing my 
code?" That was probably Vax Basic or COBOL. I /think/ the editor had a 
block-tab capability, and I think I used same in some C IDES, but to be 
honest retabbling a few lines was not such a laborious chore <g> that I 
would first do the select operation to be able to use it.

Also, Python does not support a functional style of programming so the 
line is the only meaningful textual entity. In this sense the 
primitiveness of Python makes editing easier.

Finally, Python is just a (fine) scripting language. Which means one 
does not tackle hard problems with it, the kind one figures out as one 
goes. That means less refactoring, and less refactoring means less 
slicing and dicing of the code.


> Seeing as you asked, how much Python code have
> you or Ken edited?

See above. Not Python, but out the wazoo in other languages.

Remember, we are not Lisp-only aliens, we program all the languages you 
program, plus one. :)

ken

-- 
Algebra: http://www.tilton-technology.com/LispNycAlgebra1.htm

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