"If you look at these languages in order, Java, Perl, Python, you notice an interesting pattern. At least, you notice this pattern if you are a Lisp hacker. Each one is progressively more like Lisp."
This is the basic thought. Turns out PG wrote it more explicitly than ESR.
Comments
Are you paraphrasing ESR paraphrasing Greenspun's Tenth Rule of Programming?
"Any sufficiently complicated C or Fortran program contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified bug-ridden slow implementation of half of Common Lisp."
Ref: http://philip.greenspun.com/research/
P.S. This is not a comment on TFA. Congratulations to the author on making Python even more interactive.
I am not so sure anymore where I read it. This is interesting:
https://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/2003-January/03...
It refers to this, I guess. http://www.paulgraham.com/lispfaq1.html?viewfullsite=1
"If you look at these languages in order, Java, Perl, Python, you notice an interesting pattern. At least, you notice this pattern if you are a Lisp hacker. Each one is progressively more like Lisp."
This is the basic thought. Turns out PG wrote it more explicitly than ESR.