Most of my day to day work is in python, but I have a number of projects in Racket and have been dabbling with common lisp. I think the author is simply incorre

Most of my day to day work is in python, but I have a number of projects in Racket and have been dabbling with common lisp. I think the author is simply incorrect here. Other algol like languages offer the illusion of understanding, but then you get things like 'patterns' where even though in principle you know what the atomic elements of the language mean you are confronted with an undocumented 'pattern' that you have to puzzle out to understand what the code is actually trying to do. Lisp provides structure for these patterns in the form of DSLs, and if that means someone has to confront that they don't know something, at least it whacks them in the face rather than giving them the illusion of understanding. More importantly lisps provide a way to formalize, specify, check, and document the pattern. So if lisp failed for some internal reason then I don't think it was for the reason the author specifies. What should worry people more is that a language that is better in 99% of cases can fail for reasons that have nothing to do with its technical merits, but purely by accident of history or as a result of politics unrelated to those technical merits. Trilobites were the most diverse clade in the history of the earth. Trying to rationalize why they went extinct by studying their anatomy is going to be fruitless. Same with LISP.