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

[Cameron Laird]

In article <20021108.121940.201305624.9010 at cybermesa.com>,
Jay O'Connor <joconnor at cybermesa.com> wrote:
>In article <uso37rcegqdpf6 at corp.supernews.com>, "Cameron Laird"
><claird at lairds.com> wrote:
>
>> In article <20021108.115059.1034949299.9010 at cybermesa.com>, Jay O'Connor
>> <joconnor at cybermesa.com> wrote:
>> 			.
>> 			.
>> 			.
>>>Yes, I was a Python advocate in a TCL shop for awhile and had a hard
>>>time convincing
>>>people that there was a qualitative difference between.
>>>
>>>set x [lindex [lindex $var 5] 5]
>>>
>>>and
>>>
>>>x = var[5][5]
>> 			.
>> 			.
>> 			.
>> Tcl has definite problems that are close to what this example expresses.
>>  Somebody's tilting the idiomatic playing field, though; the experienced
>> Tcl-ers I know would write
>>   set x $var(5,5)
>> rather than deal with the monstrosity above.
>
>Unfortunately the code I was dealing with was using lists of lists of
>lists nested many, many levels deep with no documentation in the code as
>to why '5' was a particular field.
>
>Try hundreds to thousands of lines of 'the monstrosity above' 
			.
			.
			.
You have my sympathy.  Are you making a subtle point
that Tcl invites bad coding?  What you describe sounds
like the moral equivalent of a Pythoneer writing
  i = 0
  while 1:
      if i < 73:
	  break
      i = i + 1
      ...
rather than
  for i in range(limit):
     ...
I'm little inclined to fault Python when people misuse
it so (and they do).
-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://phaseit.net/claird/home.html