On 2011-01-05, Tomasz Rola <rto...@ceti.com.pl> wrote: > On Tue, 4 Jan 2011, Roy Smith wrote: >> Alan Meyer <amey...@yahoo.com> wrote: >>> On 1/4/2011 4:22 PM, Google Poster wrote: >>> >>>> The syntax reminds me of Lots of Interspersed Silly Parentheses >>>> (L.I.S.P.), but without the parentheses. >>> >>> I haven't heard that version before. The one I heard was: >>> >>> "Lots of Irritating Single Parentheses". >> >> Long Involved Stupid Parentheses. > > Heh. One day, guys, when you have nothing better to do, try writing a > parser for Lisp-like language (Common Lisp, Scheme, whatever). After that, > do the same with some other language of your preference (Python, Java, > whatever). Compare time and code spent...
I've heard that justification many times, but I think it's 200% specious. 1) How often is a compiler for language X written? 2) How often is source code written in language X? 3) How often is that source code in language X read/modified? If you compare those numbers you'll realize that optimizing for case 1 at the expense of cases 2 & 3 is just plain stupid. Perhaps there is somebody on the planet who finds Lisp as easy to read/modify as Python, but I've never met him/her and never have you... Optimizing a language for the ease of the compiler writer is like saying, sure, that car is expensive to buy, expensive to run, doesn't work well, and tends to kill a lot of people, but it took less time to design! -- Grant Edwards grant.b.edwards Yow! I know things about at TROY DONAHUE that can't gmail.com even be PRINTED!! -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list