merits of Lisp vs Python

[JShrager at gmail.com]

Carl Banks wrote:
> JShrager at gmail.com wrote:
> > Okay, since everyone ignored the FAQ, I guess I can too...
> [snip]
> > What Python has is stupid slogans
> > ("It fits your brain." "Only one way to do things.") and an infinite
> > community of flies that, for some inexplicable reason, believe these
> > stupid slogns.
>
> IOW, you posted the FAQ so you could appear to have highest moral
> ground, then you ignore your own advice and promptly head to the very
> lowest ground with ad hominem insults.

You're right, in part: My implicitly linking Python's pros or cons with
its stupid marketing hype is, I think, an ad hominem argument. But I
don't see a moral issue here; the purpose of posting the FAQ was merely
to try to stop the fight. It failed.

Regardless, there was some content in my post which you have not
addressed:

To wit:

1. Lisp is the only industrial strength language with pure
compositionality, and that this makes it suprior to Python. We don't
have to debate this because it's being debated elsewhere in this
thread.

2. Ruby, which is closer to Lisp than Python, is beginning to eat
Python's lunch. We don't have to debate this either because George has
kindly gave support to it through posting a survey that made this point
quite nicely; Thanks, George! :-)

BTW, for the record, I don't have anything particularly against Python
aside from its stupid marketing hype and a bit of jealousy over those
flies building libraries which I wish we had in Lisp. I've made the
choice uncountable times between PERL, Python, and Tcl when I didn't
have Lisp as an option, and I have always chosen Python in these cases,
even though I can program in any of these. (Although I'm probably going
to start using Ruby instead of Python in these cases, but I'm not
really expert in it yet.)

(Actually, in many cases I can get away with Emacs keyboard macros
where others would program in PERL or Python, although not always.)