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

[Cameron Laird]

In article <20021108.135935.824272813.9010 at cybermesa.com>,
Jay O'Connor <joconnor at cybermesa.com> wrote:
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>No, I'm making the point that TCL is syntactically weaker at expressing
>complex structures and this is a qualitative difference between the two
>languages
>
>Expanding beyond just getting a single value from a multidimensional list
>is what happens when you start throwing in lrange for slicing and other
>ways of unwrapping the structure.  TCL's approach of using 'functionName
>$var1 var2' leads quite easily and naturally to such 'monstrosities' as a
>natural consequence of the stucture of the language.   When you start
>throwing in heterogenous structures, especially dealing with nested
>arrays (dictionaries) , etc..the syntactical shortcut doesn't scale very
>well to dealing with complex data.  (incidentally, your example does not
>do the same thing.
>
>set l1 "1 2 3"
>set l2 "4 5 6"
>set l3 [list $l1 $l2]
>set x [lindex [lindex $l3 1] 1]
>puts $x
>
>results in '5'
>
>using 'set x(1,1)
>results in an error
Yes and no.  Tcl is awful for structuring data
complexly in analogy to C.  It's at least medi-
ocre, though, at handling complex data in its
own idioms.

Yes, I fully understand that "set x(1,1)" above
gives an exception.  I'm saying that all the
well-crafted systems for managing matrices in
Tcl do NOT just make them as nested lists.  One
possibility for a nicely-engineered Tcl matrix
handler is to refer to the "upper left" element
as "x(1,1)".  I'm sorry that your co-workers
imposed such an unaesthetic misuse of Tcl as you
describe on you.

<URL: http://wiki.tcl.tk/2995 > has more on the
subject.
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		[Jay and Cameron talk
		past each other more]
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-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://phaseit.net/claird/home.html