merits of Lisp vs Python

[Paul Boddie]

tayssir.john at googlemail.com wrote:
>
> Keeping with the analogy, Lisp offers power to adapt your notation to
> the domain you're describing. One thing people expect from a language
> is a certain malleability in order for it to somehow resemble the
> domain they're describing.

I think the more interesting issue of relevance to both communities
(and I wonder whether the original inquirer is still reading) is
whether a language like Python is an acceptable specialised notation
for so many domains as to make a more malleable language like Lisp less
interesting for most specialists. In other words, that there are so
many areas where Python's arguably mundane semantics are sufficient
that the specialists have their convenient, common means of
communication which happens to span large areas of computational
endeavour. And on the occasions where Python doesn't provide adequate,
convenient metaprogramming features, might it not be the case that less
elegant program transformation mechanisms or even other approaches to
architectural design aren't good enough solutions? After all, the
various object-oriented design movements, for example, even though they
may be regarded as having produced clumsy and verbose mechanisms for
expressing certain kinds of systems, have in some way or other provided
a recognisable vocabulary that many people understand.

Paul