This is the key point:<p><i>I started programming in LISP way back in 1971 on a Univac 1108 
mainframe and also implemented a 68000-based Lisp system (~50K lines 
of real-time assembly) for mobile-robotics use in 1983 - and so know 
my way around the language.</i><p>All Lisp (or Smalltalk, or...) success stories I've read hinge on someone with an enormous amount of experience with the language. I'd argue that someone with that much experience could get the job done in (almost) any language. I'm surprised that someone with that much experience would put it down to language choice rather than deep knowledge of the problem domain.