Doing those exercises in Javascript (which I'm very familiar with and has better functions than Python, IMO) really helped me understand compilers, and lisp better. Lisps are awesome, and I've been picking up a lot of Clojure lately. Love it, and never want to go back.
Probably I will go a bit off-topic, but as a person, who is more familiar with python than any other programming language, what functions JS has, which are "better"?