[AF]

As I mentioned in another post, I'm aware of the qualities of SBCL. I know it is a much better VM. That's not what I am concerned about...what I like about Python is its quantity and consistency of libraries and its overall consistency period. Common Lisp just doesn't have that, and SBCL isn't perfect - its full functionality doesn't work across all platforms.

> That would be an incredibly bad idea.

And I'm just wondering...even with SBCL, why would it be an 'incredibly bad idea' to undertake such a project to convert a Lisp dialect to Python?

[pc]

"I know it is a much better VM."

SBCL isn't a VM. It's a Lisp implementation with a compiler that generates native code.

Admittedly, many dynamic languages folks seem to find this concept odd. The idea that {dynamic typing, garbage collection, your favourite feature from ruby/python/perl/php} requires a VM unfortunately seems strongly ingrained.

[jey]

> And I'm just wondering...even with SBCL, why would it be an 'incredibly bad idea' to undertake such a project to convert a Lisp dialect to Python?

Well...what's the point of compiling Lisp into a language with a slower runtime? If you mean that you want it to compiel to something "pretty", well, the output of a compiler is generally not pretty. It's just meant to be used as opaque object code, not something for human consumption.

[AF]

I thought I made it clear. The point of doing that is because you'd have simple access to Python's massive collection of quality libraries.

[jey]

Oh, ok.