Python vs. Lisp -- please explain

[Paul Boddie]

bruno at modulix wrote:
> Paul Boddie wrote:
> (snip)
>
> > I'm not sure why people get all defensive about Python's
> > interpreted/scripting designation
>
> Because it carries a negative connotation of "slow toy language not
> suitable for 'serious' tasks". Dynamicity apart, CPython's
> implementation is much closer to Java than to bash scripts - but still,
> as soon as you say "interpreted, scripting", peoples think "not serious".

Perhaps we should blame the main man for this confusing label, then
[1]:

"From one perspective you can say Python is a very high-level scripting
language."

Interestingly, with regard to my remark about various criteria being
more appropriate when distinguishing between interactive and
non-interactive languages, we also learn the following:

"From another perspective you can say it's a high-level programming
language that happens to be implemented in a way that emphasizes
interactivity. Python shares some characteristics with scripting
languages, but also shares some characteristics with more traditional
programming languages."

Of course, we've all had this debate before, or rather everyone else
has had this debate before and I've mostly ignored whether people call
Python a scripting language, an interactive language, an agile
language, a dynamic language, an applications programming language, or
whatever. Personally, I rather think that whichever labels one chooses
to attach to a language or platform generally come about from the
success stories one can show people in relation to that language or
platform.

But there are always going to be people who contrast something like
CPython's runtime with the Java virtual machine and ask whether CPython
has, for example as one distinguishing factor, just-in-time compilation
as a generally supported feature, and such people will be genuinely
interested in why such things typically lie outside the principal
runtime development process. People like to find distinctions between
things - sometimes arbitrary ones - and make classifications that allow
them to arrange such things conveniently in their mind. What I find
quite worrying is that while in previous years people have responded to
such discussions with a critical analysis of where Python (or rather
CPython) can be improved, it's now the fashion to just trot out some
response or other which excuses rather than explains the way things
are.

Paul

[1] http://www.artima.com/intv/python.html