For me, it's gotten to the point where Lisp is one of those "iykyk" things. Why it's so great can't really be put into words. It's a combination of factors, and

For me, it's gotten to the point where Lisp is one of those "iykyk" things. Why it's so great can't really be put into words. It's a combination of factors, and... it's a feeling of thoughts flowing into code, of bringing a program into existence through dialog with the machine, expanding and refining it through that same dialog. Gerry Sussman once said of Scheme something like "I want a good language to talk about programs with my friends, and that goes for both my human friends and my electronic friends." Lisp is probably for you if that's how you see programming, as a fruitful collaborative discussion with your electronic ally. If you see programming as "translating business requirements into code" or somesuch, you know where to find Java and you will probably be very happy with it. I don't care.