Why is Python popular, while Lisp and Scheme aren't?

[Dennis Lee Bieber]

Robin Munn fed this fish to the penguins on Monday 02 December 2002 
01:11 pm:

> 
> I find s-expressions conceptually quite easy to understand. If someone
> had explained the concept of "Code is data, that's why there's all the
> parentheses" to me earlier (i.e., in my Programming Languages class in
> college), I might have put up with the parentheses long enough for
> them to "disappear" (that is, for me not to notice them anymore). As
> it so happened, nobody explained that concept to me at the time, so I
> didn't like the syntax.
> 
> Now? Well, I'll probably get to understand Lisp well enough that I'll
> come to like the syntax. But I still believe that Lisp's syntax
> creates a pretty steep learning curve, steeper than other languages.
> The steepness of the learning curve is, I believe, one of the main
> reasons that Python is more popular than Lisp.
>

        Heh... I keep waiting for someone to mention MPI -- which replaces the 
() with {} (or was it [] <G>), and verbs are finished with : ( {if: 
{eq: a, b}, {dothis:}, {dothat:}} ). But then, the language is limited 
to open use on a few MUCKs (the two I know of being FurryMUCK and 
FurToonia). "Open use" meaning any character on the MUCK may write MPI 
actions -- whereas the original scripting language (MUF -- a Forth 
dialect) requires permission bits to be set by the sysop, as it 
accesses a lower level of the database.

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