Re: merits of Lisp vs Python
hankhero wrote: [...] > Pythons advantages are: > Faster startup-time which makes it a good scripting language. I agree with the others (especially the cleverness of Python's string quoting), but on my machine, SBCL starts up and runs a "Hello World" program a bit faster than Python, and CLisp really blows its doors off. Cheers, Pillsy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: merits of Lisp vs Python
André Thieme wrote: [...] > What do you mean with "encapsulation" in this context? Presumably that CLOS makes no attempt to enforce the distinction between "private" and "public" methods or class slots. I suppose you can indicate that certain classes, generic functions et c. are "private" by not exporting the symbols associated with them from the relevant package, but even then you merely have a way to communicate your intent to the user, not a way to force them to keep their hands off. ISTR that it's easy to get at "private" things in Python, too, so I'd be surprised if this were a make-or-break issue for Pythonistas. Cheers, Pillsy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: merits of Lisp vs Python
Piotr wrote: > Paul Rubin wrote: [...] > > Well, there's some similar way to look up elements in a Lisp > > hashtable, but I've forgotten the keyword for it (oops, cognitive > > inefficiency, having to remember separately.) FWIW, the command is GETHASH. The situation in CL is actually even worse than just having different names for these functions, since some functions put the index as the first argument (GETHASH, NTH) and others put it as the second argument (AREF, ELT). You can at least hide this archaic nonsense away by defining methods for a generic function if it bugs you. > > Python uses the same syntax for both. > That's true, Lisp would benefit from _standard_ homogenuous polymorphic > accessor functions to list-like objects and/or low-level (macro-like) > syntactic sugar. Yes, you can easily make (a i) act like (aref a i) > but it is not done by default. Legacy reasons? Well, it's not such a hot idea in a Lisp-2, since you'll often have a variable named, say, LIST, and then the meaning of (LIST 1) becomes ambiguous. In CL, you could do the implicit indexing with different braces, though, like [a i] for (aref i); this is something I periodically consider doing. Cheers, Pillsy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: merits of Lisp vs Python
Ken Tilton wrote: [...] > That was my stance for about seven years of intense Lisp. Then the > author of Practical Common Lisp did a nice job of breaking the whole > mess up into sensible chunks and I picked it up. If one programs Lisp, > one should learn Loop -- it is definitely worth the bother. I def regret > not learning it sooner. When I first read PCL (which was my introduction to Lisp) I thought LOOP was really neato. Once I actually started using it for things that weren't so simple, I began to really hate it. I think that having a specialized mini-language for iteration is a superb idea, but I don't think LOOP is it. That being said, there's a portable alternatives out there that I like way better, and I still use LOOP for dashing stuff off one-liners at the REPL. Cheers, Pillsy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: merits of Lisp vs Python
Pascal Costanza wrote: > Pillsy wrote: [...] > > When I first read PCL (which was my introduction to Lisp) I thought > > LOOP was really neato. Once I actually started using it for things that > > weren't so simple, I began to really hate it. I think that having a > > specialized mini-language for iteration is a superb idea, but I don't > > think LOOP is it. > > That being said, there's a portable alternatives out there that I like > > way better, and I still use LOOP for dashing stuff off one-liners at > > the REPL. > If you hate LOOP then you don't have to use it. Indeed, I *don't* use it except for the simplest things. > There's an important lesson to learn here: Not all language constructs > are supposed to be loved by everyone. ;) Especially in Common Lisp, where it's possible to have replacements that integrate with the rest of the language as seamlessly as the original feature they're replacing. I don't love CL because its devoid of features I hate. I love it because it provides so many great ways of getting around the features I hate. If it didn't have features I hate, I might actually like it less, because I wouldn't have anything to bitch about on USENET. :) Cheers, Pillsy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
Re: ignorance and intolerance in computing communties
On May 2, 11:33 am, Xah Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: [...] > In a person's computing career, concrete and specialized questions > like these abound, and the answers or knowledge about them are scarce. > Due to the general ignorance of technical knowledge, and the power- > struggling nature of males, and the habit of intolerance and "troll- > crying" in computing communities, made it difficult to have any > sensible discussion of original questions that doesn't fit into some > elementary level of FAQs and concepts. I'm sort of wondering why you'd expect to have a conversation about one concrete and specialized topic in a venue devoted to an entirely different concrete and specialized topic. Cheers, Pillsy -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
