[mapcar]

> If Lisp lan­guages are so great, then it should be pos­si­ble to sum­ma­rize their ben­e­fits in con­cise, prac­ti­cal terms.

His list is concise but man did he take a while to get to it!

Seriously though. The introduction was super relevant as I have wondered the exact same question about Lisp myself. What features make it so praise-worthy? Maybe X-expressions isn't a core feature for everyone to appreciate, but the fact that everything is an S-expression is an understated value. People complain about its syntax, but alternate versions (so many reincarnations of parentheses-less Lisps) have never caught on.

The thing is, Lisp is no longer unique in its feature set, and languages with more standard forms of syntax have incorporated some of its features. But it is uncommon to find all of these listed features in one language. In the domain of data analysis where I do most of my work, it still makes me sad that XLISP-STAT has been supplanted by other languages which leave the user wanting.

[agumonkey]

By feature set you mean sequences, map/filter/reduce and such ?

I felt there was more to Lisp than that. It was the root of the ML/function-based family, which deepened the recursive typed logic McCarthy talked about in his early papers.

The first-class function and functions as modeling unit, giving composability, and domain embedding as first class.