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

[Anton Vredegoor]

On Sun, 10 Nov 2002 13:26:22 GMT, Michael Hudson <mwh at python.net>
wrote:

>Did you know that s-exps (i.e. the paren heavy Lisp we know today) was
>intended to be a temporary syntax, and that John McCarthy intended to
>develop a more familiar syntax for Lisp?  Somehow he never did --
>maybe because it turned out to be a bad idea?

That option seems to be available only to people having access to time
machines. 

Wouldn't it be possible to  write a macro for Lisp so that it uses
newlines and indentation instead of parens?

I know almost all computer languages are indebted heavily to Lisp and
it still has a lot more to give, but maybe it could accept something
back? 

Like having Python "repay the debt"?. (A kind of expression used by
go-players at the time one wins for the first time against the player
that has teached one the game).

>> As a consequence we can use a more human like language to communicate
>> with the computer.
>
>With all the ambiguities that make human languages such fun?  Shudder.

Python's way of checking for protocols instead of checking for types,
and handling protocol errors graciously at runtime can be seen -with a
bit of imagination- as leaving a lot of ambiguity in interpreting the
source code. 

If I read it correctly psyco even goes a step further in generating
multiple possible execution paths and choosing the fastest path that
doesn't break assumptions. If that's not what Psyco does: Some
processors use a trick like this.

If one insists on early fixation of names to specific types of objects
this may seem to disqualify Python as it would not be "safe and
reliable". 

On the other hand for someone that is looking for readable code and
generalizing kinds of operations on objects, the added transparency of
the code can compensate for the loss in "safety and reliability" and
then some! Checking algorithm's instead of syntax introduces
"ambiguity" but its worth the price.

Probably you already know all this, and if my speculations or
formulations - ambiguities are assets that are not politically correct
- are too far off the mark I trust that they will be corrected,

Regards,

		Anton.