I think this article reverses cause and effects. It seems to start from the assumption that there's nothing special about LISP and then points to big cultural m

I think this article reverses cause and effects. It seems to start from the assumption that there's nothing special about LISP and then points to big cultural moments where programmers revered it and said "this accounts for 20% of the meme" etc. I'd say those cultural moments exist because LISP /is/ something special. You could write SICP in Java (someone probably has) but the code would be way longer and less beautiful.