SBCL is already about as fast as Java and can get most of that speed without very much time optimizing everything. Java has hundreds (thousands?) of developers

SBCL is already about as fast as Java and can get most of that speed without very much time optimizing everything. Java has hundreds (thousands?) of developers working on it. SBCL has a handful of part-time devs. What could SBCL become with all those man-years behind it? Custom syntax is hardly the big issue when using Common Lisp. I'll take that any day over the dozens of layers of useless abstraction in Java projects. I'll take it over the C code golf or "what does this undefined behavior do?". I'd even take it over the piles of garbage JavaScript I've waded through over the years.