Well, not all LISPs are considered friendly from our modern context. Just consider my favorite 'love to hate' Emacs Lisp example: http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/DestructiveOperations Check out the bit where using 'sort' incorrectly can self-modify the function. Anyhow, maybe Clojure is "just" another LISP, perhaps, but it is really nice due to many small improvements making a big difference.