merits of Lisp vs Python

[Rob Thorpe]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

Mathias Panzenboeck a écrit :

Rob Thorpe wrote:

>Mathias Panzenboeck wrote:
>
>>Mark Tarver wrote:
>>
>>>How do you compare Python to Lisp? What specific advantages do you
>>>think that one has over the other?
>>>
>>>Note I'm not a Python person and I have no axes to grind here. This is
>>>just a question for my general education.
>>>
>>>Mark
>>>
>>
>>I do not know much about Lisp. What I know is:
>>Python is a imperative, object oriented dynamic language with duck typing,
>
>Yes, but Python also supports the functional style to some extent.
>

I currently visit a course about functional programming at the university of technology vienna:
python implements only a small subset of things needed to be called a functional language (list
comprehension).

>
Python has functions as first-class objects (you can pass functions as
arguments to functions, return functions from functions, and bind
functions to identifiers), and that's the only thing you need to use a
functional approach.

Once you can do the above then you can phrase programs entirely in
terms of composition of functions, which is what functional programming
is about.

Getting good performance though is problematic without being able to
evaluate parts at compile time. This is why almost all functional
languages provide that feature in some form.

[jayessay]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.i nvalidwrites:

Ken Tilton <kentilton@gmai l.comwrites:

pps. How would Python do this? Is it possible to avoid committing to
an implementation mechanism? Compare and contrast. k

>
You'd just write a function. Python's expression syntax is comparable
to a Lisp reader (you can have nested values of mixed types etc.) so
you can use Python expressions to initialize pretty much anything.

Nah, that won't work. He's defining a set of methods _declaratively_
via a high level description.


/Jon

--
'j' - a n t h o n y at romeo/charley/november com

[Willem Broekema]

Re: CLPython (was Re: merits of Lisp vs Python)

Paul Boddie wrote:

What would it take to get Python people more interested in it? I've
been monitoring the site [1] and the mailing list [2] for some time,
but nothing particularly visible seems to be happening.

Well, judging from the reactions on blogs to the initial announcement
here, quite some people have heard about it and seem interested. But
that didn't result in more people hacking on it, which is unfortunate.

I guess in part it's because there are not that many people really into
both Python and Lisp, and those who are might not find this an
interesting project because there is nothing "wow" to show, yet.

So you are right about the project silence. Right now it's a one-person
pet project, and progress is slow. But I'm already quite happy about
the current state: stable, usable, and fairly complete.

As for more exposure: I'd prefer to wait with big announcements until
there are really interesting things achieved.

Thanks a lot for your interest and comments!

- Willem

[Mathias Panzenboeck]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

Mathias Panzenboeck a écrit :

>Rob Thorpe wrote:
>>

>>Mathias Panzenboeck wrote:
>>>
>>>Mark Tarver wrote:
>>>>
>>>>How do you compare Python to Lisp? What specific advantages do you
>>>>think that one has over the other?
>>>>>
>>>>Note I'm not a Python person and I have no axes to grind here.
>>>>This is
>>>>just a question for my general education.
>>>>>
>>>>Mark
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>I do not know much about Lisp. What I know is:
>>>Python is a imperative, object oriented dynamic language with duck
>>>typing,
>>>
>>Yes, but Python also supports the functional style to some extent.
>>>

>>
>>
>I currently visit a course about functional programming at the
>university of technology vienna:
>python implements only a small subset of things needed to be called a
>functional language (list
>comprehension) .

>
Python has functions as first-class objects (you can pass functions as
arguments to functions, return functions from functions, and bind
functions to identifiers), and that's the only thing you need to use a
functional approach.

You mean like function pointers in C and C++? I think this should be possible in assembler, too.
I thought functional languages have to be declarative?
The boost C++ library has even lambdas!

[Kaz Kylheku]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

Bruno Desthuilliers wrote:

André Thieme a écrit :

Bruno Desthuilliers schrieb:

(snip)

Both are highly dynamic. Neither are declarative.

Well, Lisp does support some declarative features in the ansi standard.

>
If you go that way, there are declarative stuff in Python too... But
neither Lisp nor Python are close to, say, SQL.

False. Common Lisp can be made to support SQL syntax.

[Martin Rydstr|m]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

Ken Tilton <kentilton@gmai l.comwrites:
<snip>

outrage over my condescension and arrogance.]

Your condescension and arrogance are fairly well established, and no
longer cause much outrage, except in extraordinary circumstances.

',mr

--
rydis (Martin Rydström) @CD.Chalmers.SE http://www.rydis.se

[Emacs] is written in Lisp, which is the only computer language that is
beautiful. -- Neal Stephenson, _In the Beginning was the Command Line_

[Paul Rubin]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

"Rob Thorpe" <rthorpe@realwo rldtech.comwrit es:

Once you can do the above then you can phrase programs entirely in
terms of composition of functions, which is what functional programming
is about.
>
Getting good performance though is problematic without being able to
evaluate parts at compile time. This is why almost all functional
languages provide that feature in some form.

I'm not aware of any special features in Haskell for that purpose, or
in Scheme until maybe with the more recent versions. I thought the
main feature needed for functional programming besides first-class
functions was guaranteed tail call optimization.

[Paul Rubin]

Re: CLPython (was Re: merits of Lisp vs Python)

"Willem Broekema" <metawilm@gmail .comwrites:

I guess in part it's because there are not that many people really into
both Python and Lisp, and those who are might not find this an
interesting project because there is nothing "wow" to show, yet.

I thought it was of some interest though I'm a little surprise by the
choice of CL rather than Scheme as a target.

I'm still not sure about the mapping of Python strings to Lisp strings.
What happens with the following in CLPython?

a = 'hello'
a[0] = 'H' # attempt to change first letter to upper case

[greg]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

Ken Tilton wrote:

How close can Python get when code is involved? The reverse function
signature is fixed, so can lambda help?

Lambda can be used if the body can be written as a
single expression. Otherwise you need to write the
function as a separate def. When the body is more
than a line or two, this is not usually much of
a problem, and is arguably more readable anyway.

--
Greg

[Bjoern Schliessmann]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

josephoswaldgg@ hotmail.com wrote:

What it isn't is some kind of miraculous invention that saves
programmers from ever making mistakes that are common in other
languages, or that reduces effort in copy-paste, as Bjoern seemed
to be claiming.

I didn't. I just stated that the Python way is less work for me.

Regards,


Björn

--
BOFH excuse #112:

The monitor is plugged into the serial port

[Bjoern Schliessmann]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

josephoswaldgg@ hotmail.com wrote:

What it isn't is some kind of miraculous invention that saves
programmers from ever making mistakes that are common in other
languages, or that reduces effort in copy-paste, as Bjoern seemed
to be claiming.

I didn't. I just stated that the Python way is less work for me.

Regards,


Björn

Xpost cll,clp

--
BOFH excuse #112:

The monitor is plugged into the serial port

[Gabriel Genellina]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

Warning: absolutely off topic!

At Thursday 14/12/2006 08:02, Christophe wrote:

>Well, I spent some time on Wikipedia looking up metric systems and
>things like that because of you, and I found a page that shows how to
>improve the current SI system by reducing the number of fundamental
>units to only two ( S for space and T for time ), and it was a great
>read. It even went so far as give a theory for the disapearance of the
>dinosaurs!

You can even make S = cT (c=ligth of speed in void space).
The choice of fundamental units is rather arbitrary, and can be
reduced further to only 1 fundamental unit and even NO fundamental units.
There is a nice book about this subject by L. A. Sena: Units of
physical quantities and their dimensions (or similar, I don't have it
at hand to check the title).


--
Gabriel Genellina
Softlab SRL

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[xscottg@gmail.com]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

Ken Tilton wrote:

Andrew Reilly wrote:
>

That all looks like data.

>
No, not reverse, the part you did not understand. I do not mean what the
code was doing, I meant that it was code.
>

Code is data is code - even in Python:

skills_table = [
{
"title": "Absolute Value",
"annotation s": ["Bleah bleah", "ho hum", "etc..."],
"hints": ["and so on", "etc..."],
"reverse" : (lambda x: whatever(x))
},
{
"title": "Square Root",
"annotation s": ["Bleah bleah", "ho hum", "etc..."],
"hints": ["and so on", "etc..."],
"reverse" : (lambda x: someother(x))
},
# etc...
]

Of course those lambdas are crippled in Python (and not really
necessary in this bogus example)... But that's without trying to be
clever:

class AbsoluteValue:
title="Absolute Value"
annotations=["Some list", "goes here"]
@classmethod
def reverse(cls, *args):
# I didn't understand what your code was doing
pass
defskill(Absolu teValue)

That would be a reasonable place for a "pie decorator" on a class, but
I guess that's not allowed. I doubt this second example would be
considered "Pythonic" in any case...

Couldn't you do that with a table
containing those fields, and key it off the defskill argument (or even the
title?) at startup?

>
Not the code. In reverse.
>

Why not?

Python has plenty of other flaws that I can't happily work around, and
I do think Lisp is more flexible. However, I think your example is
readable enough with a data driven algorithm in most any popular
language. All of the data is visible to the reverse(...) method.
Maybe I missed something in your example, but I think you aren't trying
hard enough. :-)

The one I liked was: http://ll1.ai.mit.edu/shriram-talk.pdf

If I ever fill in your RtL survey, I'll be citing that one as a turning
point for me.

>
Interpolation does not mean what you think it means.

I'm sure he meant "string interpolation", which is a common enough term
in scripting languages nowdays.

It would be easier to compare and
contrast with the Python equivalent if someone had posted such, but your
troops have fallen back to Fort So What? and pulled up the drawbridge.
>

Oh God! Is it just me out here? And I'm not even a believer.

Cheers.

[David Steuber]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

Ken Tilton <kentilton@gmai l.comwrites:

Steven D'Aprano wrote:

If that's the best example of what macros can be used for, frankly I'm
unimpressed.

>
We're shocked.

Don't anyone tell him about LOOP.

--
This post uses 100% post consumer electrons and 100% virgin photons.

At 2.6 miles per minute, you don't really have time to get bored.
--- Pete Roehling on rec.motorcycles

I bump into a lot of veteran riders in my travels.
--- David Hough: Proficient Motorcycling

[David Steuber]

Re: merits of Lisp vs Python

"Wolfram Fenske" <int2k@gmx.netw rites:

Paul Rubin <http://phr.cx@NOSPAM.i nvalidwrites:
>

"Wolfram Fenske" <int2k@gmx.netw rites:

Yes, I wrote about it in another post. It was introduced in Python
2.5. And if it hadn't been I'd still have to write code like this.

You could do something with decorators that's not too bad. You'd end
up writing:

@withConnection
def some_func():
do_whatever_stu ff ()

>
Yes, now I can. But I had to wait until Python 2.4 to be able to
that. What I like so much about Lisp macros is that they allow me to
make these changes myself.

Besides, who wants to write production code in a language that keeps
changing? It's enough work just keeping up with new libraries.

--
This post uses 100% post consumer electrons and 100% virgin photons.

At 2.6 miles per minute, you don't really have time to get bored.
--- Pete Roehling on rec.motorcycles

I bump into a lot of veteran riders in my travels.
--- David Hough: Proficient Motorcycling