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

[Kenny Tilton]

Robin Munn wrote:
> Max Ischenko <max at malva.com.uaREMOVE.IT> wrote:
> 
>   If you're a
> veteran Lisper, you'll have used proper indentation, of course; but if
> you're a newbie, or if you're reading code written by a newbie, you
> can't necessarily trust that indentation matches actual code structure.

The two IDEs I've used (MCL and ACL) had editors which indented 
"properly" automatically when you hit the tab character (it is 
effectively a "auto-indent" command, /not/ a character insertion.

If I suspect someone has been editing without reindenting, I select as 
much code as I like and (under ACL) hit ctrl-shift-p, which reindents.

Me, after a lot of editing on a function, i like to start at the top and 
tab-downarrow-tab-downarrow zipping down the function watching each line 
reindent so anything out of the way jumps out at me.

But it raely does. Those parens demarcate logical chunks of code, so i 
can edit the way I refactor, shuffling interesting semantic chunks 
effortlessly. This is not possible without parentheses.

Folks afraid of Lisp's parens need to realize /no/ Lisper even thinks 
about them after a few weeks of coding, until the day we have to edit 
other languages, at which point we miss them badly.

When i coded other languages I was pretty fussy about layout and had 
pretty firm indentation policies. The code looked fine, but I did wonder 
how much time I was spending on reformatting after refactoring. In Lisp 
its one key-chord.

-- 

  kenny tilton
  clinisys, inc
  ---------------------------------------------------------------
""Well, I've wrestled with reality for thirty-five years, Doctor,
   and I'm happy to state I finally won out over it.""
                                                   Elwood P. Dowd