> It occupies a weird middle ground where you give up the capability to code to bare metal or easily interface with C functions in exchange for nearly being abl

> It occupies a weird middle ground where you give up the capability to code to bare metal or easily interface with C functions in exchange for nearly being able to quickly and succinctly create powerful abstractions. I'd say this ground is well and truly occupied by Common Lisp. Java occupies some other ground which is neither quick nor succinct.