I've read "beating the averages" about a billion times, along with all the other PG essays. I was (and still am) a fan. I took several classes using PLT scheme and I've used PLT scheme for a reasonable amount for other tasks (wasn't called racket then). I've also dabbled with some lisps. I've read the little schemer, I've went through the wizard book. I've written the obligatory metacircular evaluator. All this got me excited.
Over the years though, I've done my best to learn the lessons and move on.
Is it really a surprise that lisp, an aged tool of refined elegance, was a competitive advantage over the other popular languages in 1997, which were still in their neanderthal phase? I'm not sure if the difference is that huge these days though. While in the olden days languages seemingly refused to learn from the teachings of lisp, it seems today they steal from lisp like pop artists steal from each other. Say, a ruby DSL with blocks and other tricks is not as flexible as a defmacro based lisp one, but could there maybe be a tradeoff here?
Writing in lisps give me what I call the intellectual warm-fuzzies. I get to use many elegant tools to form abstractions upon abstractions to create the DSL for my problem domain. I like that. Some call it doing the Right Thing. The polar opposite of duct-tape programming if you will. A quote from the article: "to translate this program into C++ they literally had to write a Lisp interpreter [so basically a lisp-to-c++ compiler]". This is exactly the sort of thing I'm talking about. It's cute. It's the Right Thing. Rewriting the code by hand in C++ is for plebians.
And, given enough code, maybe writing the lisp-to-c++ compiler is less effort than a rewrite initially. Maybe. I'll allow the benefit of the doubt. But what about the machine-outputted C++? Is the code idiomatic? Is it performant? Who wants to maintain machine generated code? Who wants to maintain a custom compiler? Maybe none of these are problems, but my vote is that it's unlikely.
The blub paradox applies much more strongly (or maybe I could say "only applies") when you haven't been exposed. When you, in your arrogance, refuse to try something different. I've traveled up and down the proverbial ladder, and I know where I'm comfortable. For now. I suspect it'll change sooner or later.
What astounds me is the arrogance to claim that lisp(s) is the One True Language, and anyone who doesn't agree Just Doesn't Get It. It's like the audacity a religious person has in claiming that their god is the one and only, in effect taking for idiots all the millions of remaining people who ever existed and sincerely believed in their own creation stories. What are the chances that everyone is stupid and you're the only enlightened one?
In response, I give you the Bipolar Lisp Programmer: http://www.lambdassociates.org/blog/bipolar.htm