In my opinion, it is Common Lisp that is famous for carefully chosen design decisions and nerdy attention to details, given the situation and the constraints (D

In my opinion, it is Common Lisp that is famous for carefully chosen design decisions and nerdy attention to details, given the situation and the constraints (Darpa saying 'fix the situation or we cut funding', and lots of implementors anxious to push /their/ way.) Sure, everything isn't "just right" (e.g. READ-FROM-STRING, no 'parse-number'), but that's a universal problem.