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From: Rustom Mody <rustompmody@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 3 Jan 2014 15:30:28 +0530
Subject: Re: Is Python really "Lisp without parentheses"? So would it be easy to *implement* a lot of Python in Scheme/Lisp?
To: Chris Seberino <cseberino@gmail.com>
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On Fri, Jan 3, 2014 at 12:16 PM, Chris Seberino <cseberino@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've heard it said, by no less a guru than Peter Norvig, that Python is a lot like Lisp without the parentheses.... at least for the basics of Python.
>
> For pedagogical reasons, I'm wondering if it would be easy to implement a big subset of Python in Scheme.
>
> The basics of Scheme or Lisp are amazingly easy to implement.

Because parsing and unparsing (aka printing) are so trivial for s-expressions

> Would implementing a subset of Python in a Scheme subset be a clever way
> to easily implement a lot of Python?

At the innards of lisp and python are garbage collected data structures.
Building one with the other gets you that for free
[Doing it in a lower level language like C is what invokes the humorous:
Greenspuns tenth law]
So yes in that one respect what you say is true.
But then theres also (apart from parsing) all kinds of semantic differences eg:
- exceptions
- modules
- OOP milarky
- C interfacing in Baskin Robbins number of flavours
- carefully crafted portable veneer on top of intrinsically non portable OSes

All these have to be handled one way or other

>
> (This isn't for practical reasons....I'm just curious.)

A crucial difference between python and lisp is that python is
practical and lisp is utopian