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

[Pascal Costanza]

Jeremy Hylton wrote:
> Alex Martelli <aleax at aleax.it> wrote in message news:<i%Kz9.15914$Bs5.565672 at news1.tin.it>...

> 
>>Hmmm, on a slightly different tack, this DOES help me articulate one
>>source of my slight reluctance to get really deep into Ruby: Ruby
>>gives the programmer just a little bit MORE dynamicity/flexibility/
>>power than Python, by messing with the fundamentals of built-ins and
>>passing "unevaluated code blocks" to methods (that's how you do
>>iterators in Ruby, while Python's iterators are utterly different) --
>>although that's still not a full-fledged macro system, I may be
>>subconsciously worrying that the little extra power IS just enough
>>to get into "newbie cravings" territory.
> 
> 
> I asked Matz about this at LL2 on Saturday.  I asked if he could think
> of examples where he wanted to change the language syntax.  He said
> the blocks were powerful enough that they could accomodate new
> features without syntax change.
> 

There are cases where blocks don't help you, but you're right in that 
blocks can take you very far.

I must admit that I don't know enough about Python's philosophy, but if 
you are concerned about Python's cleanliness you could alternatively 
build in macros as a kind of "experimental" feature, or as a kind of 
preprocessor. This would allow you at least to play around with new 
constructs, and if they turn out to be useful they can be incorporated 
into the main Python language.

And again, I definitely think that a combination of Python and Common 
Lisp would be beneficial for both communities. You could do 90% of 
coding in Python with more mainstream and thus more widely readable 
syntax, and the rest of the really hard stuff could be done on the 
Common Lisp level. I don't know if this could really work out, but I 
would like to use something like that... (Something like Python as the 
modern m-expressions of Lisp... ;)


Pascal

P.S.: We could name this "Biggus Dickus". ;-)

-- 
Given any rule, however ‘fundamental’ or ‘necessary’ for science, there 
are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the 
rule, but to adopt its opposite. - Paul Feyerabend