merits of Lisp vs Python

[tayssir.john at googlemail.com]

Steven D'Aprano wrote:
> With Lisp macros, even that isn't guaranteed. Now, if Lispers would say
> "Oh yes, macros give you great power, and with great power comes great
> responsibility. Be careful." then, no doubt, we'd take you guys more
> seriously.

Who are "we"? I was a heavy Python and Java user before being aware of
Lisp. I knew even then that there was something wrong with the
programming world, because there were too many programming patterns I
could not automate away within the language. It's ironic to be a
programmer who can't automate her own work.

I told people that programming was just "glorified accounting." I
shrugged when reading about how complexity was exploding, because that
was the language designers' job to manage it.

Upon hearing of Lisp, I taught it to myself alone, because it was
important. Despite all the FUD, despite all the people who presumed
that a language designer was smarter than his users. I came to realize
that the programming world was full of users who repeated "conventional
wisdom" based on generalities they heard from a friend of a friend of
an evangelist of a corporation -- and worse yet, I was part of that
culture and picked up those poor habits.


> Now, if you want to tell me that, despite all the talk, Lisp coders don't
> actually create new syntax or mini-languages all that often, that they
> just use macros as functions, then the question becomes: why do you need
> macros then if you are just using them as functions? Why not use functions?

You may wish to read the following:
<http://www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html>

Perhaps Lisp becomes clearer once you see its syntactic similarity with
a very mainstream language -- XML. (But sexps are far more lucid than
XML.) Then we can seriously talk about the real-world engineering
implications of macros, and other powerful features which aren't so
hyped as macros.


Tayssir