I've been using emacs and have written a a few thousand lines of elisp. I like elisp. I generally like any language that I become proficient in. But lisp isn't some sort of magical hammer that turns everyone into 10x programmers.

Maybe I still haven't had my epiphany, but I'm not a huge fan of macros in lisps and DSLs (like what ruby is known for). It makes code harder to understand.

> Everyone knows that debugging is twice as hard as writing a program in the first place. So if you're as clever as you can be when you write it, how will you ever debug it?

I don't think you should use eLisp as your point of reference. It's the worst Lisp by far.

Lisps are a continuum, and I still think there's room for new ones that are even better.