As I understand his claims, “less code that ran faster” was after switching from existing web frameworks to web.py, a from-scratch web framework he wrote himself to ‘do the right thing, simply’ (as all the best frameworks do).
The decision to write web.py instead of web.lisp was not elaborated on, however.
As mentioned above, the closest point I see to him discussing that decision is saying that ‘Python uses objects to make frameworks somewhat like the syntactic constructs Lisp allows you to make’, ie ‘you can do the same things as Lisp less easily in Python, so that’s not an advantage of Lisp’. Which is both incoherent as a refutation of the referenced reason to keep Lisp, and not a reason for the change to Python.
That's actually really direct. It appears as though they had python rewrite had more familiarity with the programmers so they had an easier time writing it.
I come from the opposite side and find python syntax and style stifling.
Instead of an ordinary blub like python, they should have doubled-down, went full-retard, and used PHP. For web work in those days, it probably would have been even faster... even easier to read and maintain.
The decision to write web.py instead of web.lisp was not elaborated on, however.
As mentioned above, the closest point I see to him discussing that decision is saying that ‘Python uses objects to make frameworks somewhat like the syntactic constructs Lisp allows you to make’, ie ‘you can do the same things as Lisp less easily in Python, so that’s not an advantage of Lisp’. Which is both incoherent as a refutation of the referenced reason to keep Lisp, and not a reason for the change to Python.