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

[Anton Vredegoor]

On Sun, 10 Nov 2002 15:09:35 +0100, "Johannes Grødem"
<johs+n at ifi.uio.no> wrote:

>* anton at vredegoor.doge.nl (Anton Vredegoor):
>
>>>You're trolling, right?
>> [...]
>> To me there's no evidence of trolling in the quoted lines.
>
>Oh, come on.  You're implying that Lisp's syntax is the way it is
>because the makers of Lisp-compilers are unable to parse more
>complicated syntax.  If you don't think that is trolling, you'd better
>put down whatever it is you're smoking and come back later.

That's not what I was implying. Possibly what I wrote could give the
impression that I imply that, but this seems highly unlikely to me.
Since there is no quote whatsoever of the relevant lines I don't have
any clue as to how this impression is generated. Maybe it's better to
take a shortcut and to directly say what I *think* I was implying: The
perceived difficulty of the parens (and it doesn't matter at all if
this difficulty is real or imagined) increased Lisp's popularity in
the early days because at that time it was thought that a programming
language worth its wits had to be difficult to read. I hope this is
solved now, and I would like to state again that this whole matter
could have been avoided if quotes had been used. I would like to add
at this stage that "ad hominem" attacks like suggesting that I have
been smoking - peculiar things maybe?- are also considered to be bad
form.

Regards,
		Anton.