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merits of Lisp vs Python

Bryan belred at gmail.com
Sun Dec 10 13:31:24 EST 2006 
Steven D'Aprano wrote:

> 
> I wonder, how many people gave up trying to learn Lisp because the
> language was too hard for them to read? Anyone like to bet that the number
> was more than zero?
> 
> 

steven, you bring back awful memories :(  in my college days, we had already
learned fortran, pascal, c, snobol, prolog and some assembly.  then we took
a lisp class.  what a complete nightmare!!!  except for that one brainiac
kid who was on "another planet", the rest of the class (about 30 people)
could not grasp lisp at all.  the teacher was always pissed off.  he kept
telling us it was such an easy language and it's so powerful and kept
saying our lisp code looked like pascal.  so, for the final he
intentionally gave us problems that if you don't think in a lisp way you
couldn't solve the problem within the time given.  of course everyone
failed or got a D.  my point is i know at least 30 people that could code
in other languages just fine, but not lisp.  i've tried to learn it on my
own several times since then, but it's just too difficult for me.  my brain
just doesn't work that way i guess.  with python, my brain doesn't hurt.  i
can program in a very relaxed way and it seems that whatever i'm thinking,
i can just write it naturally in python.  for me personally that's how i
define "expressiveness" eventhough others here would disagree on
what "expressiveness" means.


bryan
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