We need less powerful languages
Graham&#x27;s essay is basically about what general purpose language to use when you&#x27;re a small technical startup of clever hackers who want to develop cool stuff as fast as possible, using the language as a competitive advantage.<p>His conclusion is, bluntly, Lisp, since you can reprogram that language arbitrarily and it won&#x27;t get in your way.<p>It is also excellent for implementing DSLs, which can be as powerful as you want. For example, Viaweb uses (still!) a Lisp-based DSL to provide the non-Turing-complete customization language for their customers, and I suspect that whole thing was a weekend hack.<p>(Edit: it probably is Turing complete though.)<p>The ease of creating such restricted DSLs comes from Lisp&#x27;s power. At some point you&#x27;ll need a general purpose language, if only to implement your other specific languages. If your team can be competitively productive with a remarkably powerful language, Graham says you should use it.