merits of Lisp vs Python

[Robert Brown]

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.invalid> writes:
> Robert Brown <bbrown at speakeasy.net> writes:
>> Luckily, Willem Broekema has written a Python to Lisp compiler called
>> clpython that can be consulted to answer questions like these.
>> 
>>     http://trac.common-lisp.net/clpython/
>
> Does this count as a "children of a lesser Python"?  How does clpython
> implement Python's immutable strings, for example?
>
>    http://dirtsimple.org/2005/10/children-of-lesser-python.html

I think CLPython is in the "children of a lesser Python" category, on the
grounds that it doesn't implement the complete language and there's no
obvious way to reuse the C packages that make CPython so useful.  However,
the other distinguishing feature of the "children" category is bending
semantics to gain speed.  CLPython doesn't appear to be doing much of this.
The author says it runs at about the same speed as CPython.

Python strings are implemented in CLPython as instances of a CLOS class, not
as raw Common Lisp strings, so they appear to be immutable.