merits of Lisp vs Python

[Paul Rubin]

jayessay <nospam at foo.com> writes:
> You're mistaken, I'm not forgetting this.  And despite this being
> true, CL added several "new" things that (again through actual
> experience) were deemed sufficiently understood to add (CLOS,
> conditions, and such).

I thought CL's condition system was similar to Maclisp or at least the
Lisp machine.

> > mistakes from the past.  Scheme went somewhat further than CL at
> > cleaning things up,
> 
> But, Scheme was before CL (and indeed CL took some things from
> Scheme).  Of course Scheme too has continued to evolve.

But Scheme was able to depart from earlier Lisps more than CL was,
because it made no attempt at backwards compatibility.  For example,
its designers chose to make it a Lisp-1 (not saying that's better,
just incompatibly different).  CL's designers did really not have that
choice.

> > and Scheme's aficionados think CL is a clumsy old kludge as a
> > result
> 
> Well, if you lower into "flamewar" talk, CL aficionados have similar
> things to say about Scheme.  But that is just irrelevant silly flamage.

I've never heard CL aficionados say that about Scheme.  I've heard
them say that it's an elegant jewel that's too academic and
constricted for practical large program development, which is a
completely different criticism.

> >  But it's still a Lisp dialect.  The ML's, for their part,
> > were able to start from scratch.
> 
> There are Lisps like this as well (EuLisp sort of and now Arc).  But
> really, how is "starting from scratch" really an advantage?

Starting from scratch means being able to make choices fundamentally
incompatible with the old language.  Consider ML's type system--ML is
statically typed throughout and relies on type inference pervasively.
Yes you could make it look like Lisp by replacing the surface syntax
with parentheses, but it's really different under the skin.  Again not
necessarily better, but made choices unavailable to someone trying to
incrementally evolve some Lisp dialect.

> Especially from a _practical_ point of view.  

Topic started with how new ideas enter a language.  Practicality is
not of so much concern.

> Admittedly, I used to think the same, but now think that is just
> wrong.  Again, the example of The Calculus and such come to mind...

Not sure what you mean about calculus.