Lisp development with macros faster than Python development?..

[Peter Hansen]

seberino at spawar.navy.mil wrote:
> The problem is that questions like 'What lang is fastest to develop
> in?' are hard to answer definitively.

That's because the answer depends on lots of context such what is the 
problem domain and who is the programmer.  Really, it's an impossible 
question to answer.  Measuring two different programmers with two 
different languages would give useless results, since you can't ensure 
the two programmers are equally capable.  Using the same programmer for 
the same problem with two different languages doesn't work since she 
would learn from doing it the first time and inevitably have advantages 
in the second time through.  Using two different problems is of course 
pointless as well.

Ultimately, however, the question needs no answer, since "speed of 
development" is not the only or even the most important factor in 
development.  Take into account issues of maintainability, quality of 
code, performance and such, and you've muddied the question even more, 
making this a religious question and one that has no meaningful answer, 
nor a need to be answered in a simple way.

For *me*, Python has proven to be the fastest language to develop in, so 
far, but it's quite possible to imagine another language in the future 
which I might learn which would be -- for me -- even faster, at least 
for certain types of problems.  (But so what? :-)  )

-Peter