merits of Lisp vs Python

[Oleg Batrashev]

Mark Tarver wrote:
> How do you compare Python to Lisp?  What specific advantages do you
> think that one has over the other?
>
> Note I'm not a Python person and I have no axes to grind here.  This is
> just a question for my general education.
>
> Mark
Im myself python programmer with C,C++,Java,Fortran background and also
quite limited knowledge of Haskel, Lisp,Tcl,... .

Im confused with most python answers like triple doublequotes.
For me python is 'strong OOP' scripting language in first place.
Inheritance, generalization and every kind of abstractions togeteher
with clean and simple syntax make python perfect language for medium
size "scripting" projects (ie just explore the code and add your
features, no messing with compilers). Exceptions, finally/except
blocks, automatic reference counts and destructors make it easy to
write "robust" code. Packaging system and libraries are just fine.

So, python is just C++ combined with elegancy of Java and simplicity of
scripting.

Again, Im not Lisp programmer, so would like to here about mentioned
features, do those things work as nicely, especially OOP ones?
And IMHO paren misfeature is bad, although you claim it to has some
advantages. Mostly, when I copy code in python I just need to call
increase-left-margin emacs macro and there are no mentioned a+b*c
problem. So, I imagine my typical 1-2 page, max 4-5 nested python
function with great readabilty and almost no refactoring problems and I
need to add 20*2 parens to make it homogenous. :)

Oleg