What does Python fix?

Courageous jkraska at san.rr.com
Sat Sep 28 00:11:05 EDT 2002


>I'm curious to read a bit more about why Tim Peters (and presumably
>others) think that Lisp-inspired languages (even non-prefix ones) are
>doomed to eternal obscurity.  Would anyone care to comment and/or give
>me some pointers to commentary on the subject? 

Shrug. Lisp trades one form of complexity for another. By reducing
the solution to a universal grammar, they increase the symbolic load
on the user, who is awash in a page full of very similar symbols.
This is intimidating in particular to novices, for whatever reason,
who are instantly alienated. Without sweeping in novices, you lack
a grass roots movement, and without a grass roots, a language is dead.

The parts of lisp that really matter to the community have since
been adopted in part by many other languages. Lisp is dead. Long live
Lisp.

C//




More information about the Python-list mailing list