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

[Neil Hodgson]

Robin Munn:

> With color-highlighting, I could at least be certain *at a glance*
> of which paren was lining up with which.

   Excel has this feature, colouring paired braces in the edit bar.

http://www.scintilla.org/nested.png

   For a time SciTE showed Lua's nested strings in different styles, with
the default being a gradually darkening background cyan as the nesting
increased. IIRC the primary use of this seemed to be for nested comments and
was not perceived to be a great feature so I think it was removed.

Jacek Generowicz:

# I don't understand the distinction. The cursor is at some parenthesis;
# the matching parenthesis is highlighted. I see it. It's immediate. I
# can't imagine anything faster.

   You can see at a glance which parts match without moving the caret around
to highlight them one by one. It looks worth pursuing to me, but I'm not
motivated enough to implement it.

   Neil