merits of Lisp vs Python

[hankhero]

One overlooked advantage for Lisp over Python is a better development
environment, for me that means Slime for Lisp. For Python I have
several years of experience with IDLE and the win32 Ide, and Slime is
the winner. Press a key and the function you are editing is recompiled
and loaded into memory. The crossreference and the object inspector is
very nice. How about fuzzy-complete, I only have to write de-me and
press tab, and I get define-method-combination.
Slime coupled with the paredit structured editing mode, which lets you
edit Lisp code as list structure rather than characters, is a dream.

Pythons advantages are:

Faster startup-time which makes it a good scripting language.

More platforms, there is no Common Lisp on Nokia phones.

Some clever details, like using minus to index vectors from the right.
(aref "hello" -1) gives an error on Lisp, but the character o on
Python.

Another detail I like is that you can choose how to quote strings, in
Python you can write three double-quotes to start a string that can
include anything, quotes, doublequotes and newlines.
You can use double-quote if you want to embed single-quotes "john's" or
single-quote if you want to embed double-quotes '<id="2">'.

Talking about Lisps advantages will take me too long.

/hankhero, a switcher.