Is Python a Zen language?

[Kay Schluehr]

John Coleman wrote:
> Ron Stephens wrote:
> > Actually, Python has the distinction of being both a great tool
> > language *and* a great Zen language. That's what makes Python so cool
> > ;-)))
> >
> > Ron Stephens
> > Python411
> > www.awaretek.com/python/index.html
>
> This would explain why the question is so hard to answer. It is a
> slam-dunk that Lisp is Zen and VBA is tool - but python really is a bit
> hard to classify. This is somewhat similar to the way that python seems
> to straddle the gap between imperative and functional languages. It has
> something from each worlds (whether it has the *best* from each world
> is a separate question)
>
> -John Coleman

There is something that worries me about Lisp. If you are interested in
the history of Lisp and some non-technical aspects of its culture I can
recommend the writings of Richard Gabriel, who was one of the leaders
of the CL standardisation commitee and founder of the Lisp company
Lucid in the mid 80s that gone down a few years later. As it turned out
that time Lisp was not capable to survive in what we call today a
"heterogenous environment". It was strongly too self-centered. So I
would actually invert you categories and say that a good tool achieves
to have a non-dual nature instead of a strong I. With Lisp you might be
a god but according to the Zen philosophy a god is a subordinated
character that preserves the illusion of self-identity. A fine thing
about a tool in this context is that you have to define its identity by
a relationship to something that it is not.

I have at times the impression that many people who talk about Zen
philosophy confuse it with some home brewn mixture of platonism with
its transgressive move towards the true reality, a stoic hedonism of
contemplation and the taoistic being-in-doing. Zen on the other side is
more radical: if you erase yourself there is no-one "who" is in the
flow but chances are that you and the computer over there are the same
thing.

Kay