[dragonwriter]

> Whereas with lisp, you don't modify structures in place, and you're not writing code as sequential statements.

Because lisp is an impure functional language, you absolutely can modify structures in place and, while it doesn't have statements but side-effecting expressions, it is just as sequential as any other language.

Similarly, you can code without nodify structures in place and in an otherwise functional style in many languages (without TCO, recording specifically gets problematic at some point, but then Lisps don't necessarily have TCO, so...)