merits of Lisp vs Python

[Paul Rubin]

Jon Harrop <jon at ffconsultancy.com> writes:
> Yes. My point is that I only had to add four locks in 15kLOC of F# code
> because my code was almost entirely pure.

But that's like saying you only had to call malloc in 4 different
places, which means dealing with freeing, buffer overruns, etc.  As
soon as you use any locks at all, you're susceptable to all the
headaches of dealing with locks.  Anyway this is turning into
ML vs. Haskell, maybe an improvement on Lisp vs. Python but still OT.

> So F# is a long way towards that Haskell ideal whilst having many
> other advantages over Haskell, like predictable memory usage.

F# is pretty similar to ML, right?  Hmm.  Haskell's memory usage
issues stem more from laziness than purity.  One could imagine a
strict Haskell dialect that was still pure (I think ML is heading
in that direction) but that would throw out a lot of Haskell coolness.

Does OCaml support parallel threads at all?  I mean using multiple
cpu's simultaneously.  I thought it didn't and this was one of the
factors that got me to make the leap into Haskell.