How explain why Python is easier/nicer than Lisp which has a simpler grammar/syntax?

[Richard Damon]

On 8/7/20 11:46 AM, Chris Angelico wrote:
> My point is that doing Fibonacci recursively is arguably more elegant
> while being materially worse at performance, but there are other
> examples that are fundamentally recursive, are just as elegant (merge
> sort: "fracture the array in half, sort each half, then merge them"),
> and can't be done better iteratively. So IMO Fibonacci is a flawed
> demonstration of what is a very valid point ("recursion can be really
> elegant"), and other examples would serve the purpose better.

I would say that doing the recursive Fibonacci version can be an
important step (near the end) of the recursion unit as a learning
experience on some of the dangers of recursion (like turning an O(N)
problem into O(2**N). It perhaps can lead to discussions on optimization
techniques (like caching results) that can alleviate some of the issues
(at other costs).

-- 
Richard Damon