Earlier quoted context omitted.
> btw, your question assumes that Common Lisp is not evolving. This is not correct at all. Which improvements Clojure evolving consists of? Traction for one. > Transducers? Cl got them too Pointing to some random libs that implement the same concept doesn't mean it's part of a languages culture/ecosystem/common practice as transducers are to closure. E.g. I could say "Rails? Well, language X has a rails like framewor…
They should not be a part of language, what for? Everything else you mentioned is about community only, and doesn't apply directly to the language. E.g. if you have a good language without a community, community can eventually grow, but you can use the language anyway. If you have a bad language with great community - it doesn't reduce your suffering from the language itself.
My experience has been the inverse.
I'd rather use a bad, or usually mediocre language WITH community, tooling, libs, books, programmers etc, than a better one where I'll be burdened by the lack of all of these.
So, in a sense, community tramps inherent language qualities.
After all that's the very basic message from Lisp and Smalltalk.