merits of Lisp vs Python

[HowiPepper]

I'll vouch for what Harry said.  I'm definitely not a "newbie", I've
been programming since around 1982, and I am fluent in a plethora of
programming languages, not including Lisp.  I have checked out Lisp
several times in the past, but I always get turned off completely by
the parenthesis you have to use for everything.  What's up with that
anyway?

I had been a big C/Java/Perl developer for many years, but due to a job
change in May of 2005, I had to add Python into the mix.  I had never
even given Python a second thought, but after playing around with it
for one afternoon, I had learned enough to enable me to write programs
that did what I needed them to do.  I now use Python on a professional
basis almost every single day, and I can tell you with certainty that I
am far more productive with Python, then with any other language in my
arsenal.

As an aside, I recently introduced a young acquaintance to Python, as a
way to learn programming.  Since he had absolutely no background in
programming, it took a little to get him going, but thanks to the ease
of use and readability of Python, he is now very confident in his work,
and asks me questions only rarely.

With Python's ease of learning and use, availability of a large number
of libraries, extremely active development community and large
user-base, I'd say the question to ask is what specific advantages over
Python does Lisp offer, to make people switch to it?

Cheers,
Howard

Harry George wrote:
> "Mark Tarver" <dr.mtarver at ukonline.co.uk> writes:
>
> > Paul Rubin wrote:
> > > "Mark Tarver" <dr.mtarver at ukonline.co.uk> writes:
> > > > How do you compare Python to Lisp?  What specific advantages do you
> > > > think that one has over the other?
> > >
> > >    <http://google.com/search?q=python+lisp&btnI=I'm+feeling+lucky>
> >
> > Thanks;  a quick read of your reference to Norvig's analysis
> >
> > http://norvig.com/python-lisp.html
> >
> > seems to show that Python is a cut down (no macros) version of Lisp
> > with a worse performance.  The only substantial advantage I can see is
> > that GUI, and Web libraries are standard.  This confirms my suspicion
> > that Lisp is losing out to newbies because of its
> > lack of standard support for the things many people want to do.
> >
> > Mark
> >
>
> It is not just a newbie thing.  Even people who are reasonably fluent
> in Lisp use Python for many tasks, and some make python the default
> with Lisp as a special case.  It would probably be fair to say that
> the more you know about a variety of languages, the more you
> appreciate Python.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Harry George
> PLM Engineering Architecture