Lisp is hardly the only language containing base elements that are powerful and conceptually far removed from other languages, though. There are just people in

Lisp is hardly the only language containing base elements that are powerful and conceptually far removed from other languages, though. There are just people in the Lisp community who make a lot of noise about it. There's a big difference between saying, "There are some language features that are so far removed from languages you know that they just seem weird and alien. You have to adjust to the mindset of the language to see why they matter, and once you do, you'll probably start seeing places they would have been handy in your old code. For example: call/cc in Scheme, unification in Prolog, asynch. message passing in Erlang, type inference in ML. Even if you don't end up using the new language as your primary language, it will still add tools to your mental problem solving toolkit - it will help you to think more clearly." and saying "You're writing in 'blub', therefore you're a 'blub' programmer, and all you're capable of understanding is 'blub'. Maybe some day you'll wise up and use Lisp, the 'language for smart people' (LFSP)."