Well, that anecdote talks about some people _fearing_ powerful, expressive languages. In a previous job I had workmates arguing for banning "nested" Python lis

Well, that anecdote talks about some people _fearing_ powerful, expressive languages. In a previous job I had workmates arguing for banning "nested" Python list comprehensions. And as an example of such horrible nesting he proposed something like: some_list = [some_function(blah) for blah in some_other_function() if some_condition(blah)] What this says to me is that this guy didn't get list comprehensions at all and didn't want to. Sure enough, there's no nesting whatsoever going on here. He was just scared by non-C++-like syntax. My point is: popularity, though desirable in itself, is a poor measure of anything else. Most people run away from good things for no valid reason. (Not saying there are no valid reasons why Lisp is not more popular, only that none would really be needed. Obscurity is quite a stable default.)