It's the other way around. For things you've decided to write from scratch, especially if they're hard, CL is a dream. There's nothing comparable in my experien

It's the other way around. For things you've decided to write from scratch, especially if they're hard, CL is a dream. There's nothing comparable in my experience [~]: you can build unbelievably powerful and concise programs easily, then just as easily transform them in major ways. It's the ultimate combination of malleability and expressive power. (Oh, and performance, when you need it.) I can think of only three reasons to prefer Ruby over it: (1) you want Rails etc.; (2) you don't like Lisp; (3) you really like Ruby. The latter two are matters of taste, which leaves #1. [~] I haven't tried Clojure yet. Then again, I don't need to: the JVM is a drawback for me, and I don't need all those Java libraries right now.