&gt; Lisp has been around for 50+ years, hasn&#x27;t really helped its popularity much. But I&#x27;m willing to bet with you that in 14 years from now, Clojure will have even fewer users than it has today.<p>Computer science has too short a history to make any sound arguments from history. However, if you insists on arguing from history, let&#x27;s look at the long term trend. Would you agree that the trend of programming language is progressing to higher and higher level of abstraction and further and further away from the machine details? From machine code, to assembly language, to C, to Java, and now FP languages, this trend of mainstream programming language evolution is very clear. In this sense, if you take Lisp as a pioneer of function programming, it was simply ahead of its time.<p>If you are implying that Lisp syntax is somehow an impediment to its popularity. That may well be. It&#x27;s a personal preference issue. Some people like more syntax in their language, some people like less. If you are in the later camp, Lisp is surely very attractive. For example, in your kotlin one-liner, there are just too much syntax to understand &quot;()&quot;, &quot;..&quot;, &quot;.&quot;, &quot;{}&quot;, etc. Life is too short, I just don&#x27;t want to learn all these idiosyncrasy invented by someone just for the sake of being different. I wished I had knew Lisp sooner, certainly not having programmed for 20 years.<p>I am sure you will lose that bet.