"The whole nasty 'configuration' problem becomes incredibly more convenient in the Lisp world. No more stanza files, apache-config, .properties files, XML configuration files, Makefiles — all those lame, crappy, half-language creatures that you wish were executable, or at least loaded directly into your program without specialized processing. I know, I know — everyone raves about the power of separating your code and your data. That's because they're using languages that simply can't do a good job of representing data as code. But it's what you really want, or all the creepy half-languages wouldn't all evolve towards being Turing-complete, would they?"
This touches on the core problem with the whole Java ecosystem. The existence of so many tools demonstrates, first, that the underlying technology is insufficiently expressive and, second, that many programmers would rather create tools than applications.
Leaving the second aside, the kinds of tools required for Java development are largely unnecessary in the Lisp world because the language itself is expressive and extensible. You don't need different representations for data and code, separate parsers, and frankly bizarre build systems (coughmavencough).
As ESR, I believe, said "Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it." Unfortunately, it also makes you more aware that things don't have to be as bad as they are in the Java world.
Hopefully s-expressions will be the next aspect of Lisp rediscovered in "modern" programming languages.
This touches on the core problem with the whole Java ecosystem. The existence of so many tools demonstrates, first, that the underlying technology is insufficiently expressive and, second, that many programmers would rather create tools than applications.
Leaving the second aside, the kinds of tools required for Java development are largely unnecessary in the Lisp world because the language itself is expressive and extensible. You don't need different representations for data and code, separate parsers, and frankly bizarre build systems (coughmavencough).
As ESR, I believe, said "Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it." Unfortunately, it also makes you more aware that things don't have to be as bad as they are in the Java world.
Hopefully s-expressions will be the next aspect of Lisp rediscovered in "modern" programming languages.