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From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@nz.invalid>
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Subject: Re: Why don't people like lisp?
Date: Thu, 4 Jul 2024 01:47:17 -0000 (UTC)
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On Wed, 03 Jul 2024 18:11:35 -0700, Paul Rubin wrote:

> In Haskell, max always
> takes two args of an ordered type, and maximum takes a list arg.
> maximum [2] gives 2 but maximum [] throws an empty list exception.
> maximum just applies max repeatedly, like using reduce in Lisp.

Seems unnecessary to have two functions when one will do.

> ... for the variadic versions in CL and Scheme, (max 2) gives 2
> but (max) throws a wrong-number-of-args error.

I will admit, Python doesn’t like an empty argument list for max and min 
either.

But then, Python max and min work for things besides numbers.