"... but instead are able to write code that modifies code and generates code as easily as if you were writing the original code in the first place: the comparison to Ruby is therefore fundamentally flawed."
This. The ability to easily reason about the code and manipulate it because its syntax is simple and predictable is the big deal to me.
I think this is analog to switching from Roman to Arabic numerals. The syntax is regular. No matter how big the number is the rules are the same. There are no exceptions. Hence doing calculations with the former is a lot clumsier than with the latter.
That's the ideal scenario at least. I do realize that math might not be as simple as it could be, but I'm not really qualified to argue about that. But what if we were still using Roman numerals today? Would we be at the level of understanding we are at right now? It seems to me that it's more or less the same thing when you start understanding Lisp and why it is the way it is.
This is just too big of a tradeoff to be ignored. In my experience choosing the simple and regular solutions paves the way to progress, in which useful things that look trivial now would be rightly discarded or would be viewed as too complex if our mental model were grounded on the previous clumsy framework.
Now, I'm not saying "just drop all your clumsy languages right now, because today we have a better idea, and start using Lisp". I certainly don't do that. I don't even work with Lisp. But my point is that not realizing that Lisp has some properties that make it special is perhaps hindering yourself of being able to see that some things can be a lot simpler than you thought they could be.
This. The ability to easily reason about the code and manipulate it because its syntax is simple and predictable is the big deal to me.
I think this is analog to switching from Roman to Arabic numerals. The syntax is regular. No matter how big the number is the rules are the same. There are no exceptions. Hence doing calculations with the former is a lot clumsier than with the latter.
That's the ideal scenario at least. I do realize that math might not be as simple as it could be, but I'm not really qualified to argue about that. But what if we were still using Roman numerals today? Would we be at the level of understanding we are at right now? It seems to me that it's more or less the same thing when you start understanding Lisp and why it is the way it is.
This is just too big of a tradeoff to be ignored. In my experience choosing the simple and regular solutions paves the way to progress, in which useful things that look trivial now would be rightly discarded or would be viewed as too complex if our mental model were grounded on the previous clumsy framework.
Now, I'm not saying "just drop all your clumsy languages right now, because today we have a better idea, and start using Lisp". I certainly don't do that. I don't even work with Lisp. But my point is that not realizing that Lisp has some properties that make it special is perhaps hindering yourself of being able to see that some things can be a lot simpler than you thought they could be.