If Scheme is so good why MIT drops it?

[Carl Banks]

On Jul 24, 11:06 am, Raffael Cavallaro
<raffaelcavall... at pas.espam.s.il.vous.plait.mac.com> wrote:
> On 2009-07-23 23:51:02 -0400, Carl Banks <pavlovevide... at gmail.com> said:
>
> > On Jul 23, 5:52 pm, Rui Maciel <rui.mac... at gmail.com> wrote:
> >> fft1976 wrote:
> >>> How do you explain that something as inferior as Python beat Lisp in
> >>> the market place despite starting 40 years later.
>
> >> Probably due to similar reasons that lead php to become remotely relevant
> > .
>
> > Well, the only reason PHP became relevant because it was an
> > easy
>
> ^^^^^^^^
> ^^^^^^^^ (emphasis added)
>
> > to
> > deploy solution in a single application domain, the web, that happened
> > to explode.
>
> i.e., Python "beat" lisp because it is ~70% of lisp in a form that is
> much more palatable to the average programmer, just as php became
> popular because it is powerful enough to do websites and, most
> importantly, apprehensible to mediocre programmers and even some
> non-programmers.

That the two languages made something easier is the beginning and end
of the similarities between them.

PHP made hacking together a security-hole-ridden website easier.
Python made actual programming easier.

PHP became what it is because it rode on the coattails of a technology
that grew in spite of it (kind of like everything Microsoft has
shipped since Windows 3.1).  Python became what it is because it
earned the respect of programmers, who contributed to it and spread
the word about it.  That it is easy to use is only a part of why it
earned that respect.  Two languages could not have come to prominence
by more different means.

I can handle Python being called inferior to Lisp or a language for
stupid people or a single-core-using dinosaur of a language or worse
than Perl.

But please don't put it on the same level as PHP.  Their situations
have almost nothing in common.


Carl Banks