With Lisp your program is data, like any other data, so it is easy to transform with macros etc. (Disclaimer I have never written a lisp program) On the other

With Lisp your program is data, like any other data, so it is easy to transform with macros etc. (Disclaimer I have never written a lisp program) On the other hand languages like Haskell have a powerful type system that largely negates the need for macros. However when you do want to macro in Haskell you have template Haskell and it is quite ugly. In a nutshell: Language wars are stupid.