The problem I have with Lisp for scientific computing is that libraries matter. You really want to standardize not only what you are calling but also your notat

The problem I have with Lisp for scientific computing is that libraries matter. You really want to standardize not only what you are calling but also your notation because most of the people that you want to use the libraries are scientific domain experts and not "programmers": they may know like 20 functions and that's it (and that's fine!). Lisps tend to love the "you can build anything in it! You can make all of your own syntax in it!" and I think that goes too far. Julia lets you do this with macros, but then there's a good convention to not overuse this. There has to be a balance between being too structured (which hurts innovation) and too dynamic (which makes it hard to learn someone's new library because everything is too different), and I think Julia strikes the right balance.