To me state is what makes lisp hard, every time I look at lisp code (scheme via guile) I need to interpret it in my head to figure out the state. And certainly

To me state is what makes lisp hard, every time I look at lisp code (scheme via guile) I need to interpret it in my head to figure out the state. And certainly the set! doesn't help. Lisp puts a heavy burden on the individual programmer, and its benefits can be achieved with better planning and engineering with the standard C++ toolkit. Yet, it is not easy to achieve the advantages of C++, such as performance, parallel execution, low level with lisp. Lisp is nice for the few who have small projects, big brains, and little time, but by tightly coupling the problem to the code (with no performance benefit) it creates a unstructured nonsense that nobody but the author can understand.