I think the commenter meant something different from the original author. I think they meant that you spend more time thinking about how to write it in Lisp.

I think the commenter meant something different from the original author. I think they meant that you spend more time thinking about how to write it in Lisp. I'd contest both points, really. First, I think if you're sufficiently comfortable in almost any language, you can translate pretty fluidly from idea to implementation. There are real differences, but they're overstated. In that respect, Lisp's "hardness" is really not being deep into the language and natively breaking problems down in a way that maps to functional languages. Second, and I think your point, is that getting to that point where you've got the problem broken down into its components is the hard part. I think there are tasks where that's true and ones where it's not, and again, that's largely language independent, though the amount of time needed for the more menial aspects does vary.