I don't know what was the programming like in the early days of java, but none of the original featurs of java is unique to java anymore - whereas lisp has some

I don't know what was the programming like in the early days of java, but none of the original featurs of java is unique to java anymore - whereas lisp has some unique features. C is pretty bad language to compare Java to - they are designed to write different kinds of programs actually. It shouldn't be surprise that doing stuff with sockets is much harder in low level language as C. Also, threads and semaphores are two different things, (by the way, there is some threads support in C), so point (5) is simply invalid. Considering lisp - I don't see what is wrong with indentation - they actually have something to do with logical structure of code, (also I don't get whats wrong with their usability - for me this 'random indented code' is readable). Speaking of too many lisps - one could as well say that there are too many C-like languages : C, C++, C#, Objective-C. They are all different languages, no some forks of 'The Lisp'. Considering books - well, I've read few of them and none mentions lambda calculus (unfortunately, I'd eagerly learn something about that) - e.g. PCL, 'On lisp'. Also, I think you completely miss the point with lambdas - they are necessary when you are using higher-order functions and naming them would be pointless.