Your point that there is more than one axis on which to measure the power of a programming language is well-taken. That said, you can normalize to one axis. The

Your point that there is more than one axis on which to measure the power of a programming language is well-taken. That said, you can normalize to one axis. The point of pg's essay is that only people who have learned the relevant tools are qualified to judge them. The solution to your Lisp v. Haskell dilemma is simple: ask the people who know both. I agree with Lispers that macros are powerful, and the stuff in the book Let Over Lambda is ridiculous and awesome. I also think that macros are dangerous, and I prefer to only use them if there's no other alternative. I pick Haskell over Lisp, having used them both extensively, and I've seen far more people come to Haskell from Clojure than the other way around. With regard to Fortran, embedded, etc, see my response to marcosdumay. Yes, those niches are sizeable and you should use the correct tool for the job. That has no bearing, though, on the question of which programming language is better.