Sure, it is a matter of degree - we could ask, how much extra crud is needed? I think lisp like languages have less crud, and so the idea is clearer. This is

Sure, it is a matter of degree - we could ask, how much extra crud is needed? I think lisp like languages have less crud, and so the idea is clearer. This is partly because lisps can act on their own expressions, transform them. This follows from extremely uniform or consistent grammar. Now you could say C++ can do that, but look at the amount of machinery needed in Boost to add something like a lambda or an accumulator 'pattern' to the language. Its a matter of degree - sure you can write a DSL in C++ [recursive descent, lex/yac, boost, macros etc] but in lisp this really is just a natural part of the language - syntactic sugar can be manufactured. Lets take the idea of a callback - this is an excellent design pattern that gives you a great deal of power. You could implement using function pointers in C, or say functor objects with operator() in C++... either way, I contend there is a lot more crud and boilerplate than there is in lisp where a lambda is a fundamental construct of the language. The more surrounding crud or machinery, the less clear the concept. In other words, patterns in lisp can be _more_ clearly distinguished as such, because there is less cruft. Often the name of the concept or pattern actually occurs in the code as a function name, for example.