> Reddit is proof that lisp is really powerful. Paul Graham originally wrote reddit, in lisp, on the back of a napkin while he was waiting for a coffee. it was so powerful that it had to be rewritten in python just so that ordinary computers could understand it. Because it was written in lisp it was almost no effort to rewrite the entire thing, and the rewrite was completed in-between two processor cycles. Paul Graham himself was completely written in lisp, by an earlier version of himself, also written in lisp, by an earlier version of lisp. It's lisp, paul graham, lisp, paul graham, all the way down.

(from http://www.secretgeek.net/lisp_truth)

> Unfortunately a Russian spy stole the last meg of a LISP program for controlling our nuclear defense systems. Fortunately, it was all right-parenthesis.

Python:

    sum(range(1,11))

SmugLispWeenies is why we hate Lisp. People who, when writing Lisp tutorials, spend a condescendingly large time telling the reader that they are going to have their mind blown by the concept of first class functions. In the space year 2015 people are still doing this.

Also they have apparently never heard of Forth either.

The one thing that I take away from all of this is that the people complaining just don't 'get it'. I don't know whether it's a personal failing of the individuals involved or something about lisp that is orthogonal to most people's thought processes, but the page reads more like (to me) sour grapes than a reasoned discourse on why lisp sucks. Compare that to the article posted yesterday about CLASP (https://drmeister.wordpress.com/2014/09/18/announcing-clasp/) - a brilliant piece of engineering that the creator said was just not doable in other languages, and you have a huge cognitive dissonance. But then, ymmv.

I'm slightly unclear why this website exists.

As expected, a page for Lisp fanboys.