Lisp mentality vs. Python mentality

[Ben Finney]

Carl Banks <pavlovevidence at gmail.com> writes:

> In answering the recent question by Mark Tarver, I think I finally hit
> on why Lisp programmers are the way they are (in particular, why they
> are often so hostile to the "There should only be one obvious way to
> do it" Zen).

That's not what the Zen says. The statement you're mis-quoting says,
minus the parenthetical:

    There should be one obvious way to do it.

It's only in a parenthetical (“and preferably only one”) that the word
“only” appears. The emphasis is not on having only one way, but on
having one *obvious* way.

-- 
 \       “The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. |
  `\           The pessimist fears it is true.” —J. Robert Oppenheimer |
_o__)                                                                  |
Ben Finney