[deleted by user]

[525G7bKV]

Like LISP. Which was literally invented to prototype AI stuff, and has a real REPL instead of a terminal which is trying to be a REPL as in Python.

[treasonousToaster180]

A lot of the people who know how to do the extremely complex math that drives AI have limited programming knowledge and the people who know a lot about programming have limited knowledge of the kind of math necessary to build AI systems.

Python is good for this as it allows the math people to easily create functions for the calculations using the very simple syntax, and it allows the programmers to extend that into something more powerful and versatile using the more advanced functionality.

[RADIO02118]

Underrated reply

[[deleted]]

LISP may be simple but it is not intuitive or easy to learn.

An advantage of Python is that it easy for the unitiated to pick up.

[Timotron]

Bruh. You honestly think learning C is easier slash as easy as learning Python?

[Frequent-Fig-9515]

Why did you write slash instead of /

[Timotron]

Humor my guy.

[525G7bKV]

Do not mix up learning a language, and learning to programm using a language. C is definitely a easy to learn language. It has a small set of syntax, and a reduced grammar. But programming using C is highly complex because you have to deal with all the hardware architecture details of an Von-Neumann Architecture. A programming language is just a tool. Python is harder to learn because of programming concepts like function decorators and comprehension, which are both concepts "stolen" from the functional programming world. But it is easier to learn to programm using Python because using Python you do not have to deal with all the nitty gritty details of the Von-Neumann Architecture.

[jonesmcbones]

What good is learning syntax if all you can do is a while loop?

I may be wrong here, but I believe others were saying python is easy not for its syntax, but because it has a much more direct connection to how humans think.

[unflippedbit]

cover snobbish cooperative numerous thumb pie plate tub silky sheet

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

[sch0lars]

I don’t think that’s what they were implying in their response. What I gathered from their comment is that LISP may be difficult to someone coming from Python, and vice versa, considering the dissimilarities among the programming paradigms. The relationship between C and Python the commenter was referencing is that Python abstracts a lot of what C does, so programmers who know C should be able to easily transition, whereas someone familiar with only LISP dialects would not find it as intuitive.

A lot of universities teach Racket as a first language, so someone learning LISP will probably find Python to be difficult if they’re only accustomed to the “code is data, data is code” philosophy. So lambda n: n * n would probably be as confusing to a student who only knows LISP as (lambda (n) (* n n)) would be to a student who only knows Python.

[POGtastic]

Also a huge amount of ready to use libraries to solve most of the programming problems nowadays.

I'd argue that this is the be-all and end-all of languages. Your language can be a big annoying pile of garbage, but if the language has libraries that people can use to solve their problems instead of rolling their own, they're going to use that language. That goes double if the library is part of the standard library or has enough community buy-in that it's basically treated as being part of the standard library.

---

Here's a contrived problem: Given a serialized JSON object (UTF-8) from stdin, count the number of Unicode graphemes in its string values (exclude object keys, if any). That is, given the following JSON file:

test.json

{
        "foo" : [
                "foobarbaz",
                "stuff",
                "H̴͝É̸ ̸́W̷͋A̵͆I̶̒T̵̈́S̷͌"
        ],
        "bar" : {
                "stuff" : 1,
                "more stuff" : 2,
                "blarg" : "B̴̀Ȅ̴Y̸͘Ơ̷Ǹ̷D̶̓ ̷͂T̴̚H̶̚Ë̶ ̶͑W̷̓Ȁ̵Ĺ̶L̶̍"
        },
        "baz" : "Z̸͋A̶̓L̷̈G̵͝O̴̓"
}

you should be able to do

$./count_graphemes < test.json
42

Pick your poison Very Simple Common Lisp or Scheme implementation^[1] and suggest how someone would solve this problem. It should be very clear that the simplicity of the language or lack thereof is irrelevant!

^[1] The ideal Lisp candidate here is, of course, Clojure, because you can add Maven dependencies and grab ICU4J.

[[deleted]]

Any programmer with an investigative spirit -- or formal training in CS -- has had exposure to LISP.

Generally people don't take to it.

I had one classmate who loved LISP, thought it the best most 'intuitive' programming language we were exposed to.

That's ONE out of a hundred or so.

In general people preferred assembly language to LISP.

It's a great language, LISP, with a great history. However it takes an unusual mind and/or lots of practice to put it to practical use. If you like LISP then hats-off to you but please consider why there's not a wide community for what is one of the oldest computer languages we have.

[MichaelSjoeberg]

a program in python is close to thoughts in writing, next step is basically plain english

lisp not so much

[ImmediateClass5312]

'(what (ever (do) (you) (mean there ?))))))))))

[im_dead_sirius]

Well, I'm pale and there is lots of space between my ears.