[AnimalMuppet]

You can, but it's like picking your nose with boxing gloves on[1] - it's really clumsy. In Lisp, it's natural and easy. It's maybe the same in result, but it's really different in ease of use.

[1] Credit where due - I stole that phrase from my friend Michael Pavlinch.

[int_19h]

One could argue that it's made "natural and easy" by making Lisp itself much more difficult to write. So, in other languages, the macro authors pay the tax, but their users do not. In Lisp, everyone pays the tax. This is, perhaps, why writing macros is far more common in Lisp than in other languages with them - if you pay the tax either way, you might as well fully utilize what it buys you. Whereas in another language, you weigh the benefit that a macro will give you, against the tax you will pay if and only if you write a macro.

[insertcredit]

Most "other" languages don't have Lisp-like macros, so I'm not sure what you are talking about here.

I don't think Lisp is much more difficult to like, on the contrary, out of all the languages I know well (C, C++, Python, Java, Common Lisp) not only do I find CL _by far_ the easiest to write but also that it puts me in a state of flow (= unparalleled mental clarity, focus and productivity) which doesn't easily happen with the others.

Credentials: I spent close to 10 years writing C++ at Google.

I certainly think that Lisp is very different to most popular programming languages today and that difference is immediately obvious. This makes it very easy for people who do not like leaving their comfort zone to dismiss Lisp simply because it "feels" too strange to what they're already familiar with.