merits of Lisp vs Python

[Stefan Nobis]

Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au> writes:

> Which just proves my point. If people don't share the same language
> constructs, the same words, the same grammar, etc, they can't
> understand each other.

Yes, but that depends *much* more on social background, habits,
experience than on technical details like correct syntax, orthography
etc. Do you know about studies with texts where the letters of each
word are disordered except the first and the last and nearly everyone
was able to read this (OK, it took a little bit more time, but it was
readable)? So much to the importance of syntax and orthography.

Essentially every group of people, scene, community has it's own
special language and if you want to communicate with them, you have to
learn this language. Excatly the same goes for software projects with
their libraries -- completley independet of the technical background
of the abstractions (functions, classes, macros,...) the libraries
provide.

It's really funny to see how you try to create and defend a purely
factitious line between abstraction techniques like functions,
classes, and even operator overloading and shadowing on the one side
and those big bad macro monsters on the other side.

-- 
Stefan.