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

[bryan.gene.olson at gmail.com]

Christian Seberino wrote:
> A beginner I think could learn Lisp much faster than Python.

For talented beginners, Lisp rocks much like Python, in that easy assignments are easy enough to implement. On the high end, Lisp rocks again: Lisp masters are astonishingly productive. In between, beyond pedagogical exercises but short of our Turing Award masterwork, Lisp's extreme flexibility has a significant down-side in violating the middle third of Python Zen (PEP 20) guiding principle: "There should be one -- and preferably only one -- obvious way to do it."

Flexibility is good. In a programming language it's great, and Python is super flexible. Lisp is beyond. There are many Lisps, the big two of which are Common Lisp (CL) and Scheme. Common Lisp has been more industrially important, but Scheme out-Lisps CL. As we deal with Python's recent additions, such as "enum", the walrus operator, type hints, and async/await, I remain in awe of [call with current current continuation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Call-with-current-continuation), which in Scheme is abbreviated "call/cc".