merits of Lisp vs Python

[greg]

josephoswaldgg at hotmail.com wrote:
> Neil Cerutti wrote:
> 
> > The parenthesis I added means I don't have
> > to use the new-line escape character (\), either.
> 
> Is this so unconscious that you don't recognize you are doing it, even
> though you take a sentence to explain what you had to do to work around
> it? 

Yes, it is pretty unconscious. We all do many things
unconsciously in everyday life that would take at
least one sentence to explain to someone else if we
had to think about it.

Besides, in many cases the required brackets are
already there -- e.g. if it's a list, or a function
call with many arguments -- in which case you don't
have to add anything at all.

> Adding parentheses ... all this is a
> burden specific to Python.

As opposed to Lisp, where all you have to do is
use parentheses... oh, er...

> By the way, you guys seem fixate on the parentheses of Lisp without
> having the experience

I don't know about the other Pythonistas in this
discussion, but personally I do have experience with
Lisp, and I understand what you're saying. I have
nothing against Lisp parentheses, I just don't agree
that the Lisp way is superior to the Python way in
all respects, based on my experience with both.

--
Greg