merits of Lisp vs Python

[Robert Uhl]

Mathias Panzenboeck <e0427417 at student.tuwien.ac.at> writes:
>
> I do not know much about Lisp. What I know is:
>
> Python is a imperative, object oriented dynamic language with duck
> typing, List is a declarative, functional dynamic language -> those
> two languages have different scopes.

Common Lisp is an object oriented language too, and while it has more
declarative features than Python, I don't think that it's really fair to
call it declarative in the same sense as, say, SQL.

Language-feature-wise, Lisp is a superset of Python: there's nothing one
can do in Python that cannot be done in Lisp, although there are some
things one would need to write oneself (e.g. generators) and some stuff
would be more of a pain (e.g. Python provides iterators, which means
that for can understand new objects; CL LOOP is not extensible, unless I
have missed something big, but it's simple enough to write a
map-new-object or loop-new-object or whatever).

Library-wise, Python is pretty much a superset of Lisp, and in fact many
of the things Lisp was criticised for providing as a standard part of
the language are also standard parts of Python.

-- 
Robert Uhl <http://public.xdi.org/=ruhl>
The problem with 'post-modern' society is there are too many people with
nothing meaningful to do, building 'careers' around controlling the lives of
others and generally making social nuisances of themselves.
                                         --Graham Strachan