As a non lisp programmer, it is hard for me to automatically see what is going on in a lisp program because of mismatched " ' " and a lot of parenthesis. I believe this is one of his points. When I was learning python, or ruby, for that matter ( I use both! ) I never felt like I had no idea what was going on in the code even before I learned the languages.
Should this really be so surprising, though? Lisp is based on a different model of computation than Python and Ruby. You can't follow non-trivial C code without understanding pointers, or Prolog without understanding unification.
Syntax aside, the semantics of Python are intended to be unsurprising to people with a conventional programming background. I don't have any practical experience with Ruby, but it looks like a mishmash of Smalltalk and Perl to me, and I can usually get the gist of code snippets. Likewise, I can kinda-sorta follow written Dutch (since I've studied German and speak English fluently), but I wouldn't expect to be able to just read Thai.
Interestingly I find myself equally baffled when I have to read code with side-effects. There's just so much implicit state (and state changes going on in the background), you have to keep in your head. Pure languages are so much easier to understand.
I should probably try to learn lisp. I primarily use emacs, so it would make a lot of sense. Some of the ruby/rails stuff out there for emacs really isn't very good.
Emacs lisp is handy for toying around with the editor, but it's a horrible Lisp. It does not even have lexical scoping. You are much better off in terms of entertainment (through learning interesting stuff) with e.g. PLT Scheme or perhaps Arc.
(My comment about pure languages above was meant to highlight the joys of Clean and Haskell. Curry may also be worth a look. And Prolog, if you dare.)
I'd say that learning Scheme is more likely to convey what's interesting about Lisp, and there is quite a bit of great programming literature associated with Scheme. I'm not sure if it's easier to learn CL after Scheme or vice versa, though.
I still haven't done anything with Prolog past using it for prototyping, but it has some really cool ideas, and I hope to have a good excuse to play with it more soon. (And it, too, has some great books.)
> You are much better off in terms of entertainment (through learning interesting stuff) with e.g. PLT Scheme or perhaps Arc.
. . . but if you want to actually use a LISP for practical programming, and you start out with any Scheme, you're going to have to follow that up by learning another (non-Scheme) LISP. You might as well just start out with Common Lisp and be done with it.
Judging by my experience, Scheme is not a language one should set out to learn so much as a language one should learn as a side-effect of going through a book like SICP or The Little Schemer. Trying to do anything "real" with Scheme is an exercise in frustration, especially if you want it to be portable across Scheme versions, since the biggest names in Scheme implementations appear to be entirely uninterested in library portability except where "portable" means "Well, we can use it, and don't care whether you can."
Scheme itself is an excellent language, though. Too bad that, alone, is not enough.
What happened to the library situation in Common Lisp? Your comment looks like it improved since the last time I checked. That would be nice. (Though I fear Common Lisp is still too ugly for me to enjoy it. Perhaps some reader macro magic could rectify the situation. ;o)
I don't know if the library situation is good in Common Lisp. It's just enough worse in Scheme that it's kind of ridiculous to consider actually using it for other than academic purposes.
Therefore I like Python for imperative programming and its extensive libraries and far prefer Haskell to any LISP dialect for functional programming. Haskell is elegant in a way LISP wishes it could be.
Pleas do, i would love to hear your argument. I fail to see how lisp is less humane than python, when i find it to be exactly the opposite.
Edit: what i meant was that lisp is more about the human, not that python is more about the machine, i hope i don't get misunderstood.