The advantages that Ruby has over Lisp

(written by Lawrence Krubner, however indented passages are often quotes)

This is an interesting conversation, from way back in 2005. Eric Kidd makes the argument that Ruby is better than Lisp in several of the ways that Lisp itself likes to be judged.

However, I think zlxcgrogdss had a good response in the comments:

A Lisp is a Lisp because it’s code is represented as its basic data structure. Ruby’s isn’t (unless you argue that Ruby’s code consists of strings, and string is a baic data structure; though I’m sure you’ll agree that this would be pure sophistry). Lisp without this property is like a wheel that isn’t round.

I agree, the most interesting thing about Lisp is that everything, both data and code, has the same syntax, and therefore code can be passed around as data, and then later evaluated as code. It is an interesting trick. Ruby is wonderfully expressive, but it does not have that rigid syntax. In the case of Lisp, rigid syntax is a good thing.