Why don't people like lisp?

[Donn Cave]

In article <OiZkb.838841$uu5.148203 at sccrnsc04>,
 "Scott McIntire" <mcintire_charlestown at comcast.net> wrote:

> "Lulu of the Lotus-Eaters" <mertz at gnosis.cx> wrote in message
> news:mailman.274.1066683135.2192.python-list at python.org...
...
> > Incidentally, I have never seen--and expect never to see--some new
> > mysterious domain where Python is too limited because the designers did
> > not forsee the problem area.  Nor similarly with other very high level
> > languages.  It NEVER happens that you just cannot solve a problem
> > because of the lack of some novel syntax to do so... that's what
> > libraries are for.

> Can't one make the same argument for Visual Basic. Use libraries as the
> method to "build up the language" to a domain. Keep the language as simple
> as possible and just use libraries - yeah, that's the ticket.

Well - yes!  I mean, I honestly don't know a thing about Visual
Basic, but I find no irony in this.  Relatively humble language
is widely used thanks to rich library support - QED.

Now I'm sure Python programmers will mostly say that its core
language features are superior to Basic's and a move to that
language would be a big step backwards, and of course the same
will eventually apply to Python when a radically better language
arrives.  But that's thanks to basic language design, not
incremental tinkering.  As the man said, incremental tinkering
doesn't open the door to new application areas, it's just something
to keep the language designer busy so he doesn't get bored and
design a new language that competes with the old one.

   Donn Cave, donn at u.washington.edu