I stopped using python (2.7) a couple years ago once I learned CL. But—if you’re dealing with reading standard input incrementally there are differences between readline() and the interator when it comes to buffering. Or, at least, it was easier for me to get readline to work than it was to figure out how to configure the iterator correctly.

This, the whole Unicode mess and the fact that lisp allows you to write at the same level of abstraction (or greater) without sacrificing performance as much, led me to abandon Python for almost everything.