[CPlatypus]

Fair point about "pragmatism" but the contrary "elegance" often comes across as dogmatic or even elitist. Most languages strive for both pragmatism and elegance, but tend to favor one a little over the other.

And yes, this is relevant since Python and Clojure embody exactly this kind of tension.

[whateverer]

I guess one could pinpoint it to the clashing of the traditions of pure mathematics and engineering which one finds in Computer Science.

Elegance is an often trotted epithet in mathematical writing, and sure, it has some sort of established connotation (minimalism, what we call orthogonality, etc.), but in the end it's almost always something like "it has sugar, and marmalade, and skittles and ketchup! All my favorite ingredients! I'm very glad they didn't put that icky caramel stuff in it".

Anyhow, Clojure sports a fair bit of ``pragmatism'' with its own, very leaky sequence abstraction, as you sometimes feed a vector to a function and you get a linked list and next thing you know, your head has been put in your ass (when you conj/cons an element to a sequence).

Lisp has also always leaned to a sort of messiness in its use, even if the language's features and libraries are held to a higher standard. Thus you see phrases like ``ball of mud'' used in a subtly positive way.