merits of Lisp vs Python

[tayssir.john at googlemail.com]

Paul Boddie wrote:
> To bring that maligned natural
> language analogy back into repute, I'd argue that Python and its
> apparent restrictions act a lot like the specialised vocabularies and
> familiar structures employed when presenting material in various
> scientific disciplines: one could argue, upon reading a paper, that it
> would have been a lot easier for the author to have structured the
> paper differently and to have defined a one-off vocabulary, but issues
> of convenient communication are highly likely to override such
> considerations, especially in disciplines where conventions in
> communication are already very strictly defined.

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.

So for example, Lisp may not offer infix syntax by default, but there
exist infix libraries you can download. (Haven't used it myself
though.)
http://www-cgi.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/ai-repository/ai/lang/lisp/code/syntax/infix/0.html

In this sense, you can see that Lisp's syntax is rather general and can
be molded. Within the constraints of typical text sourcecode.


Tayssir