merits of Lisp vs Python

Pascal Costanza pc at p-cos.net
Tue Dec 12 05:53:39 EST 2006


I V wrote:

> One of the things I've always found off-putting about lisp as that all the
> syntax looks the same. In Algol-derived languages, each syntactic
> construct has a fairly distinctive appearance, so when, for instance, I
> encounter a for loop, I can quickly recognize that that's what it is, and
> bracket out the "scaffolding" and pick out the details that interest me.
> With lisp, I can't do that, I have to read through the sexp, decide on
> what syntax it is, and then remind myself where to look for the relevant
> specific details.

May you have tried the wrong Lisp dialects so far:

(loop for i from 2 to 10 by 2
       do (print i))


This is Common Lisp. (Many Lisp and Scheme tutorials teach you that you 
should implement this using recursion, but you really don't have to. ;)


Pascal

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