What Makes Lisp Great

Faré: What Makes Lisp Great:

[U]nlike most other languages, Lisp is not an arbitrary design based on the whims of some author, but it is a discovery produced by a long evolution and a deep tradition. It has seen several revolutions: transition from M-expression to S-expression, from EVALQUOTE to EVAL or from dynamic binding to static binding, introduction of data-structures, of object-oriented programming and of a meta-object protocol, the invention and latter standardization of many many individual features. Many dialects of Lisp also introduce their own revolutions, such as continuations and single name space in Scheme, the graphical user interface and dreaded DWIM features in InterLISP, etc. If anything remains among all these revolutions and variants, it is the ability to evolve. Lisp is a language fit for evolution -- not just by a small group of wizards who control the language implementation, but by every single programmer who uses the language. And this wasn't a conscious intended part of the original design: this was the great discovery of Lisp. (My emphasis.)

Now I understand better why I'm wary of Clojure: Clojure is big on revolution and small on evolution. And in a revolution, people get killed. Or, in Clojure's case, language features that have evolved over decades. Maybe devolution is the correct term.