Re: what is the problem?

[Paul Graham <address@hidden>]

Perl has been getting Lispier, but it started further 
away from Lisp than Python and Ruby.  As a first
approximation, Python seems to be an inadvertant 
reinvention of a 1970s dynamically-scoped Lisp (except 
for s-expressions and thus macros).  It seems as
if these ideas came to Python indirectly via Modula-3,
which was based in part on Lisp.

Perl on the other hand seems to have grown out of 
shell scripting, and to have become Lisplike largely
as an instance of Greenspun's Tenth Rule.  

I actually like Perl's wierdness.  Someone recently
posted an interview with the guy who designed Ruby and
he said he took a lot from Perl and very little from
Python.  I can see what he meant.  Python seems to 
have little that's news to a Lisp hacker, whereas Perl
is interestingly mind-bending.



--- Paul Prescod <paul@prescod.net> wrote:
> Paul Graham wrote:
> > 
> > ...
> > 
> > I ask because Kevin suggested that Python is a cleaned
> > up Perl, whereas it seems to me that despite their
> > similar libraries, the core of Python is closer to
> > Lisp than Perl.
> 
> Perl is large. If you look at the right subset, it looks like a
> syntax-y
> Lisp also.
> 
>  Paul Prescod


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