merits of Lisp vs Python

[Jon Harrop]

jayessay wrote:
> Fair enough.  But really, I don't see any of these things as
> particularly "modern" (whatever that means) or groundbreaking.
> Certainly not at this point.

Performance and type theory are modern in the context of FPLs. Both have
been retrofitted to Lisp with varying results.

> Also, there is the issue of whether there even is a "continual
> progression", as in "moving up some ladder" towards something
> "better", in the context of programming languages.  All of that is
> pretty fuzzy stuff, and plenty of CogSci work has shown these value
> judgements in this context to be less than obvious in any meaning.

If you look over a long period of time (e.g. back to the last major change
to Lisp) then language research has had clear overall directions.

> There is also a question about "old/new" wrt these value judgements.
> Since Lisp is (admittedly some hand waving here) more or less lambda
> calculus embodied, is it closer to say The Calculus or Group Theory
> than to some random piece of technology?[1] If Lisp is "old
> fashioned", then The Calculus and Group Theory are like _really_ old
> fashioned.  But does that lessen them in some way?  What would that
> be?  Is some random "new" technique (say brute force iterative
> techniques for calculus problems with computers) somehow "better"?

Again, just read research papers to learn what's new.

For example, we're going multicore whether you like it or not, so concurrent
GCs will become much more important over the next few years. F# adds that
to OCaml. That's new and its better.

-- 
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
Objective CAML for Scientists
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/ocaml_for_scientists/index.html?usenet