merits of Lisp vs Python

[josephoswaldgg@hotmail.com]

Anders J. Munch wrote:
> jayessay wrote:
>   > Please note: GC is not part of CL's definition.  It is likely not part
> > of any Lisp's definition (for reasons that should be obvious), and for
> > the same reasons likely not part of any language's definition.
>
> Really?  So how do you write a portable program in CL, that is to run
> for unbounded lengths of time?
>
> - Anders

Write it, and depend on the implementation to do its job well, and
complain to the implementors if it doesn't.

How do you write a portable program in C that is to run for unbounded
lengths of time? Even if you religiously call free() on every
malloc()'d block, you could eventually fragment memory enough that the
allocator might eventually fail. You can exceed the VM capacity. The OS
could decide to crash periodically. The power supply could fail, the
sun could progress to the red giant phase...

The real answer is that these are not issues for the language
definition, but for the implementor.