How about Lisp? I know, I know, it's a religion and all that, but let's put it this way: you can get high-performance Lisp code, there are Lisp compilers that

How about Lisp? I know, I know, it's a religion and all that, but let's put it this way: you can get high-performance Lisp code, there are Lisp compilers that allow you to do things at the machine level (SBCL, for example, has support for pointers and inserting assembly language instructions), and OSes have been written in Lisp in the past. Why this over C++? Well, first of all, basically anything is better is C++ at this point, but as for why Lisp in particular, there are a few reasons. First, I won't deny my own biases -- I know Lisp, I use it in my work, and I know that the tools to do the things I mentioned above already exist (perhaps an ML fan can answer whether or not such things are available in SML or OCaml). Second, Lisp is never really "out of date," in the sense that you do not need to rewrite your compiler to introduce a new language feature (consider what was required to add lexical closures to C++, and compare to something like CLOS, which can be implemented in macros for Lisps that do not have object oriented constructs). Finally, there is the expressive power of Lisp; an experienced Lisp programmer will run laps around an experienced C++ programmer, simply because it is easier to describe a complicated program in Lisp than in C++ (this argument also applies to ML, Haskell, Python, and dozens of other languages; again, I will not deny a personal bias towards Lisp).