I think it's more than a uniform language stack, after all C++ could be considered one as well but most people still use python to interface it as opposed to ju

I think it's more than a uniform language stack, after all C++ could be considered one as well but most people still use python to interface it as opposed to just using it (at least for exploratory data science). It's a combination of interactivity to experiment, conciseness to stay close to the pseudo-code/math, easy hackability since you need to stay beyond the cutting edge and performance so you're not restricted in what you can do. Common Lisp (as does Clojure and Julia to a lesser extent) has unparalleled interactivity (besides maybe smalltalk), you can make it as concise as you want, ultimate hackability and really good performance. Research (not deployment) is the one area CL could probably surpass every other, but unfortunately it lacked a concentrated effort (by a company or community) in this current AI resurgence (maybe because of the Lisp Curse). Though there will always be other opportunities.