I think this applies to a very specific subset of "great tools", to wit: the code-shoveling IDE. Others have already posted examples of useful tools that would

I think this applies to a very specific subset of "great tools", to wit: the code-shoveling IDE. Others have already posted examples of useful tools that would be hard to eliminate through better languages. I'll add my own favorite: Slime, an Emacs environment for Lisp that talks to your running program to do things like autocompletion and displaying argument lists.