GOAL code was many things, but "ugly" is a stretch. Jak and Dexter did more than any game of its time, and the only reason they were able to do that is because

GOAL code was many things, but "ugly" is a stretch. Jak and Dexter did more than any game of its time, and the only reason they were able to do that is because of the flexibility of the codebase. Its performance wasn't merely on par with C, but actually surpassed C in many cases. For example, they were able to stream content from disc dynamically while the game was running, and no other engine had that capability. That sounds unrelated to "performance" since it's a design decision, but in fact "performance" is everything which the end user cares about, such as load times. And the only reason the game engine performed well was Lisp. Many of Jak and Dexter's competitors didn't survive, performance problems being one of the reasons. (Game publishers used to cancel projects if development milestones aren't being met, such as a convincing tech demo. So if a tech demo was unconvincing, e.g. due to extreme performance problems, publishers basically killed the company. Maybe that's even still true as of 2015, but it was definitely true in 2001.) EDIT to your reply: You're right, I edited my comment and added a second paragraph. Also, I apologize for my earlier tone. It was uncalled for and needlessly argumentative. Sorry.