Python vs. Lisp -- please explain

[Alexander Schmolck]

"Kay Schluehr" <kay.schluehr at gmx.net> writes:

> Alexanders hypothesis is completely absurd. 

You're currently not in the best position to make this claim, since you
evidently misunderstood what I wrote (I certainly did not mean to suggest that
Guido *deliberately* chose to make python slow; quite the opposite in fact).

Maybe I wasn't sufficiently clear, so if rereading my original post doesn't
bring about enlightenment, I'll try a restatement.

> It turned out over the years that capabilities of Python optimization are
> lower than those of Lisp and Smalltalk. But its a system effect and
> epiphenomenon of certain design decisions. 

The point is that the design decisions, certainly for Common Lisp, scheme and
particularly for dylan where also informed by what could be done
*efficiently*, because the people who designed these languages knew a lot
about advanced compiler implementation strategies for dynamic languages and
thought that they could achieve high levels of expressiveness whilst retaining
the possibility of very fast implementations (IIRC dylan specifically was
meant to be something like within 90% of C performance). CL and dylan were
also specifically designed for building very large and sophisticated systems,
whereas it seems Guido originally thought that python would scale to about 500
LOC.

> This might change with PyPy - who knows? The Lisp/Smalltalk design is
> ingenious, radical and original and both languages were considered too slow
> for many real-world-applications over decades. But no one has ever claimed
> that Alan Kay intentionally created a slow language in order to hold the
> herd together - and it accidentally turned out to be reasonably fast with
> JIT technology in the late 90s.

I'm pretty sure this is wrong. Smalltalk and Lisp were both quite fast and
capable before JIT technology in the 90ies came along -- just not necessarily
on hardware optimized for C-like languages, partly because no one anticipated
that the x86 and co. would become so dominant (I also roughly remember Alan
Kay expressing his frustration not to long ago over the fact that despite a
50000 fold increase in processing speed, current hardware would only run early
smalltalk 100x faster than the lisa -- I almost certainly misremember the
details but you get the picture).

> A conspiracy like theory used to explain what's going on is needless.

Indeed.

'as