The library situation (warning: mini-rant)

[August]

Ah. In that case, it looks like we'd get most mileage out of a more complete (in both senses) set of libraries to address things that have become much more common in the last 10 years or so, and making it easier to install and use them. Mostly, I suspect, polish (which is the other 90% of the development work).

Whether or not you like the language, I think Python does a good job in this respect.

[TheGZeus]

Ah. In that case, it looks like we'd get most mileage out of a more complete (in both senses) set of libraries to address things that have become much more common in the last 10 years or so, and making it easier to install and use them. Mostly, I suspect, polish (which is the other 90% of the development work).

Whether or not you like the language, I think Python does a good job in this respect.

Wanna re-implement lisp in python? Then we get the libraries, and the axiom that lisp is slow becomes true again

[JamesF]

Ah. In that case, it looks like we'd get most mileage out of a more complete (in both senses) set of libraries to address things that have become much more common in the last 10 years or so, and making it easier to install and use them. Mostly, I suspect, polish (which is the other 90% of the development work).

Whether or not you like the language, I think Python does a good job in this respect.

I get that impression too; it seems to be a useful reference point.

[JamesF]

Ah. In that case, it looks like we'd get most mileage out of a more complete (in both senses) set of libraries to address things that have become much more common in the last 10 years or so, and making it easier to install and use them. Mostly, I suspect, polish (which is the other 90% of the development work).

Whether or not you like the language, I think Python does a good job in this respect.

Wanna re-implement lisp in python? Then we get the libraries, and the axiom that lisp is slow becomes true again

I'm pretty sure it's been done the other way around, but this looks more like what you're talking about: http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/

[smithzv]

I'm pretty sure it's been done the other way around, but this looks more like what you're talking about: http://common-lisp.net/project/python-on-lisp/

Now, I have never used it, but python-on-lisp calls out to Python. It is like an FFI for Python (like I said, I haven't really looked at how it works, but I get the idea that it is similar to how LTk communicates with wish).

I have played around with CLPython, http://common-lisp.net/project/clpython/, which is an project to write an implementation of Python in CL, which would mean that you could compile Python to machine instructions using the your favorite implementation. So maybe "Python is slow" could become a myth. Definitely not ready for prime time though, since many of the Python standard libraries are written in C and are inaccessible (until they are ported).

Zach S