Matthias Felleisen has done work on comparing programming languages: https://jgbm.github.io/eecs762f19/papers/felleisen.pdf Also some of the practical aspects of using Python vs other languages have been documented here: https://haslab.github.io/SAFER/scp21.pdf i On Mon, Aug 5, 2024 at 10:03 PM Alan Mackenzie wrote: > Hello, Emanuel. > > On Mon, Aug 05, 2024 at 00:55:48 +0200, Emanuel Berg wrote: > > Jeremy Bryant wrote: > > > > Lisp is the most powerful and elegant of programming > > > languages. If you want to see how powerful and elegant > > > a programming language can be, you need to learn Lisp. > > > It will give you standard for measuring other languages. > > > Ah, I don't know, that kind of boasting. Powerful and elegant > > are both immeasurable things, well, maybe in electrical > > engineering one can measure it. > > > > Calling Emacs Lisp "python-like" is derogatory to Emacs > > > Lisp. Python has some of the characteristics that make Lisp > > > superior, but not all of them. > > > Okay, then everyone should know this is a controversial thing > > to say. No one, or very few, would recommend Emacs Lisp as an > > alternative to Python 2024. > > > It will sounds like we are a bunch of fanatics boasting from > > our own echo chamber were, inside it, we all are fantastic and > > high on Lisp. > > > Lisp's superiority is a myth. > > > To me it is more like a drug :) > > To understand the opposite point of view, read one of Paul Graham's > essays at https://paulgraham.com/icad.html, where he describes 9 > novelties introduced by Lisp into programming in 1958, and how most, but > not all, of these have since been adopted by lesser languages. > > My own view is that Lisp indeed is one of the top languages, but that > Common Lisp is too big, and thus too difficult, to learn for most > programmers. For those who succeed in learning it, their productivity > will be enormous whilst using it. Maybe this productivity could be > matched by other "strange" languages (Haskell, perhaps?), but not by > "normal" languages such as C, C++, Java, Python or perl. I think it a > pity that a moderate sized Lisp, something around the size of Emacs Lisp > without the cl-* extensions, never made it as a general purpose language > alongside the above. > > > -- > > underground experts united > > https://dataswamp.org/~incal > > -- > Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany). > > --- > via emacs-tangents mailing list ( > https://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/emacs-tangents) > -- -- A man must either resolve to point out nothing new or to become a slave to defend it. -- Sir Isaac Newton