In practice, it is exactly the opposite of a "curse". From many practical points of view, when you actually use it, it feels and behaves like "one good language". You probably have little idea how jaw-dropping it feels when you write the same piece of logic in Clojurescript, and it seamlessly runs on both JVM and Javascript - completely incompatible platforms. I have not seen this kind of code-reuse even with Node, where the runtime is basically the same on both sides, but you still have to write code for them separately.

And you haven't even seen the Clojure<->C++ interop in Jank. Anyone who has even the slightest clue of what's up says this is some kind of blackmagicfuckery.

I mostly don't use Lisp for work; we have some Clojure services, but they rarely require any attention - mostly when we need to bump dependencies. But I use a Lisp for personal stuff and I switch between different dialects multiple times a day - Elisp, Babashka, nbb, Fennel, Jolt, Jank - and the overhead is virtually none. I can't say the same thing about switching between JS/TS, even though I have used them for far longer than any Lisp.

Your entire rave sounds like exactly like a NixOS heavy user ranting about the greatness of flakes and immutability.

And I am left wondering if it is that great why didn't it take over. I think you are ignoring some minor things that make it unpalatable for the most programmers.

> But adoption isn't either.

Gonna pushback on this. Adoption is proof of fitness to purpose in the Worse is Better way.

> Nix has steep learning curve

Not what I meant. I meant more in praise vs. how little you can see it in the wild.

> I am not ignoring them, I speak from my heart

I believe you speak from the heart, the same way I believe NixOS people speak from the heart. Or OpenBSD enthusiasts. The issue isn't the passion, but the way that passion biases you to overlook some corner.

I suspect in Lisp/Clojure case it's the lack of a large community and performance issues. Either the community is uninterested in making Lisp fast, too splintered or ignoring benchmarks.