Indeed, the Java code is readable to someone who's just picked up a Java book/tutorial, while that CL code is like an "obsfucated mandarind local dialect" to so

Indeed, the Java code is readable to someone who's just picked up a Java book/tutorial, while that CL code is like an "obsfucated mandarind local dialect" to someone just starting to learn CL (even to someone pre-exposed to SICP Scheme or other lisp-family languages)! I think it's closer to someone writing Python code specifically tailored to the way PyPy does JIT or smth like that, but that wouldn't be idiomatic Python in a thousand years, or even "comprehensible by the average Python coder".