merits of Lisp vs Python

[Paul Rubin]

Espen Vestre <espen at vestre.net> writes:
> > Can you redefine CLOS methods without calling CLOS functions that tell
> > the object system what to expect (so it can do things like update the
> > MRO cache)?  I.e. can you redefine them by poking some random
> > dictionary?  You can in Python.  I don't claim that's a good thing.
> 
> Just as I said: Less managable, but not more dynamic.

I'm not getting through to you.  Yes, you could create a Python-like
object system in Lisp that's separate from CLOS, but nobody would use
it.  It wouldn't matter whether you could compile it efficiently or
not, since nobody would care.  What matters is that you can compile
CLOS efficiently.

Python's object system is used in every Python program and it has
those properties and if you try to remove them, you don't have Python
any more.  A Python compiler has to deal with that.  So compiled
Python code is necessarily going to suffer compared with compiled Lisp
code.