merits of Lisp vs Python

[Kirk Sluder]

In article 
<pan.2006.12.10.16.44.10.802429 at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au>,
 Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au> wrote:

> On Sun, 10 Dec 2006 14:35:07 +0000, Kirk Sluder wrote:
> 
> > In article 
> > <pan.2006.12.10.13.28.42.581905 at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au>,
> >  Steven D'Aprano <steve at REMOVE.THIS.cybersource.com.au> wrote:
> > 
> >> And here I was thinking that languages fell from the sky like donuts!
> >> Gosh, thank you for explaining that too me. What a fool I must seem!
> > 
> > Certainly that is what you wrote. If you had not meant that English 
> > enforces restrictions on expressiveness, perhaps you should not have 
> > written it.
> 
> Okay, I'm trying to meet a common ground here, but you're not making it
> easy. Of course English, like all languages, restricts what can be said in
> that language. I'm talking about grammar and syntax, not semantics, just
> like I said at the beginning.

Well again, the question is exactly *what* is doing the restricting? 
What will happen if you make an "illegal" statement in English? If 
you can't define some sort of mechanism inherent in the English 
language that prevents the expression of "illegal" utterances, then 
you can't make the claim that "English. .. restricts what can be 
said in that language."  This is a technical point, but not a 
trivial one. That is one heck of an active verb that you are 
attributing to an extremely passive noun.

If you want common ground, it appears that we both agree that 
language practices are enforced by social communities. Is this not 
the case?

> Oh, you might also like to look up what a straw-man argument is before
> continuing to accuse people of making it. There seems to be this myth on
> the Internet and Usenet that a straw-man argument is "any argument I don't
> like, or don't understand, or can't refute".

Certainly. A straw man is an artificially weak position that you 
attribute to your opponent.  You chose to argue against the 
artificially weak position of "there are no rules." You attributed 
that position to me, not acknowledging my stated position. In what 
way is this not a straw man?

You now claim to agree with the position I actually stated: language 
is restricted by social communities that use language. If we both 
agree on this position, we can move on back to the discussion on how 
those norms and practices discriminate against unlispy/unpythonic 
language extensions.

> That might be true in the case of public code which is open to the entire
> community, but it isn't true of all code. Not all code is open to the
> wider programmer community to inspect. Code gets written in small teams,
> or by individuals, and then it gets used by potentially millions of people
> who never got to review the code but have to suffer the consequences of
> any bugs in it.

What do people who don't need to read code, or don't need access to 
code matter in regards to code readability? 

And yes, small teams do constitute a linguistic community of 
practice as well. But I don't know of many small teams who don't 
have histories as members of larger communities of practice.

> (I'm not saying this is uniquely a problem caused by Lisp macros. Don't
> misinterpret what I'm saying.)

Which comes back around again to my constant question. Why do these 
threads consider macros as a way to extend the language so much more 
of an obfuscatory threat compared to other methods of language 
extension: (including libraries, operator overloading, and 
polymorphism?)