One significant difference between (Ruby, Python) and (ML, Lisp) is the nature of the world they were born into. Widespread internet access, along with the tre

One significant difference between (Ruby, Python) and (ML, Lisp) is the nature of the world they were born into. Widespread internet access, along with the tremendous utility that the internet holds for developers, strongly encourages the concept of a canonical implementation of a language, in a way that simply didn't seem nearly so important 20+ years ago. (It's also interesting that the internet encourages this notion of canonical implementation even while simultaneously encouraging the creation of forks.)