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

[Jacek Generowicz]

larrye2000 at hotmail.com (larry) writes:

> Another question that could be asked about Lisp is:
> Most people it seems have nothing good to say about lisp:"it's hard to
> read,it's slow, nobody uses it, it's hard to learn etc, etc".

These people, invariably, haven't got a clue about Lisp.


Chad Netzer <cnetzer at mail.arc.nasa.gov> writes:

> On Friday 08 November 2002 15:48, larry wrote:
> >
> > Why do SOME people think Lisp is a fantastic programming langugae?
> > Are we missing something?

> Because for all it's silly, irritating parenthesis, it got some
> things very right.

Yes ... including the parentheses. [*]

> Whenever I see a new language, I tend to ask myself: "What subset of 
> LISP is it trying to do, and what does it give up to do so."

This is the perfect cue for mentioning ...

Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming: "Any sufficiently complicated C
or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified bug-ridden
slow implementation of half of Common Lisp."

(Some people like to add the caveat: This includes implementations of
Common Lisp.)



[*] Acutally, there are no parentheses in Lisp, but let's leave that
discussion for another day.