I'm disappointed by this paper. The general review of the language is of the sort that you can find a dime a dozen on LISP enthusiast sites--so this paper does

I'm disappointed by this paper. The general review of the language is of the sort that you can find a dime a dozen on LISP enthusiast sites--so this paper does little to effectively recruit existing programmers to the cause. On the other hand, the references to current bioinformatics projects using LISP is helpful as an index, but provide few details to convince a biologist that they're worth checking out--so I'm not convinced on that side either. The "key point" of a forthcoming BioLisp is embarrassingly glossed over. I think the paper would be much stronger if it focused on that BioLisp aspect, talking about: * What is BioLisp? A mere web portal pointing to various resources across various languages? An attempt to create a curated installation of version-compatible libraries for a specific LFL? An attempt to develop a fully-integrated framework for that LFL?? (I think Sage for Python might be a useful model here, but if you were trying to build that, you'd have to start by picking your LFL, which the authors at present seem unwilling to advocate. That in itself demonstrates one of the main liabilities at present in adopting LISP--the community is fractured between Racket, Scheme, Clojure, and various implementations of Common LISP--often to the extent that they argue over whether their respective opponent languages even _deserve_ to be called LISPs. And, of course, in this forum we even have Arc fanatics to add to the lot. ;-) ) * What challenges face biologists attempting to use LISP in their work? How does BioLisp help to address those? ("Your language lacks macros" is not an argument at a sufficiently detailed level, I'm afraid. Rather, actually show them a DSL built in LISP that they will desperately want!) * For that matter, what challenges face biologists attempting to use R/Python/Julia/etc for their work? How does BioLisp help to address those? * What promising pieces could BioLisp be built upon? What pieces are missing? What pieces need modernization? By all means, I encourage scientists and LISP enthusiasts to make the case that biologists should/could be using LISP--but make sure you actually make the case!