How about a more direct measure of "power", the ability to get things done? Honestly, I don't think that's a more direct measure, on the contrary, though it's

How about a more direct measure of "power", the ability to get things done? Honestly, I don't think that's a more direct measure, on the contrary, though it's a good measure of value. The question you ask is more of "is really power what we need?". I would say yes, we need power, but not only. I actually agree with AnimalMuppet: some factor (like battery life) can render useless an otherwise impressive device. My objection is that you can't call "power" to any factor that makes you more productive. It's not just nitpicking. If you redefine power to mean value in general, you lose a more precise definition and take real power out of the equation to create value. One of the little insights that I've found useful when thinking about all kind of problems is the often overlooked importance of negative factors. People usually look closely to power, acceleration and readiness, but fail to consider factors that are absent or that prevent a process to get traction. I believe that the problem with Lisp is not that power is not important, or that we should call other things power, but that power is not sufficient by itself and there are other factors that prevented it for becoming the dominant language.