Python's "only one way to do it" philosophy isn't good?

[Andy Freeman]

On Jun 27, 8:09 am, "Chris Mellon" <arka... at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 6/27/07, Andy Freeman <ana... at earthlink.net> wrote:
> > It's easy enough to get around the lack of objectness and add the
> > equivalent of an iterator iterface, in either language.  The fact that
> > lisp folks haven't bothered suggests that this isn't a big enough
> > issue.
>
> Is this where I get to call Lispers Blub programmers, because they
> can't see the clear benefit to a generic iteration interface?

The "Blub" argument relies on inability to implement comparable
functionality in "blub".  (For example, C programmers don't get to
call Pythonists Blub programmers because Python doesn't use {} and
Pythonistas don't get to say the same about C programmers because C
doesn't use whitespace.)  Generic iterators can be implemented by lisp
programmers and some have.  Others haven't had the need.

> > The difference is that lisp users can easily define python-like for
> > while python folks have to wait for the implementation.
>
> Yes, but Python already has it (so the wait time is 0), and the Lisp
> user doesn't.

"for" isn't the last useful bit of syntax.  Python programmers got to
wait until 2.5 to get "with".  Python 2.6 will probably have syntax
that wasn't in Python 2.5.

Lisp programmers with a syntax itch don't wait anywhere near that long.