merits of Lisp vs Python

[Bruno Desthuilliers]

Paul Rubin a écrit :
> "Rob Thorpe" <rthorpe at realworldtech.com> writes:
> 
>>Once you can do the above then you can phrase programs entirely in
>>terms of composition of functions, which is what functional programming
>>is about.
>>
>>Getting good performance though is problematic without being able to
>>evaluate parts at compile time.  This is why almost all functional
>>languages provide that feature in some form.
> 
> 
> I'm not aware of any special features in Haskell for that purpose, or
> in Scheme until maybe with the more recent versions.  I thought the
> main feature needed for functional programming besides first-class
> functions was guaranteed tail call optimization.

Strictly speaking, only first-class functions are required, and 
tail-recursion optimisation is only an implentation detail. Now it's 
obvious that when it comes to real-life-size programs, this is a *very* 
important detail !-)