merits of Lisp vs Python

[Rob Thorpe]

Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:
> Mathias Panzenboeck a écrit :
> > Rob Thorpe wrote:
> >
> >>Mathias Panzenboeck wrote:
> >>
> >>>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
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>I do not know much about Lisp. What I know is:
> >>>Python is a imperative, object oriented dynamic language with duck typing,
> >>
> >>Yes, but Python also supports the functional style to some extent.
> >>
> >
> >
> > I currently visit a course about functional programming at the university of technology vienna:
> > python implements only a small subset of things needed to be called a functional language (list
> > comprehension).
>
> Python has functions as first-class objects (you can pass functions as
> arguments to functions, return functions from functions, and bind
> functions to identifiers), and that's the only thing you need to use a
> functional approach.

Once you can do the above then you can phrase programs entirely in
terms of composition of functions, which is what functional programming
is about.

Getting good performance though is problematic without being able to
evaluate parts at compile time.  This is why almost all functional
languages provide that feature in some form.