Well, it’s true that Lisp has meta-syntactic programming and Java doesn’t, however since Java doesn’t have homoiconicity, you end up with people building things where a lot of the meta-programming is baked into XML files.
So, you could argue that a large, complex Java program can’t be understood just by reading it a line at a time, you have to figure out how it is all wired together via the XML files.
I think what I’m trying to say is that large and complex systems are, well, large and complex whether in Lisp or java. But Lisp has standard libraries just like Java, e.g. CLOS. So it’s true Dave could write his own objects, and Nora her own conditionals, but I wonder whether that is more folklore than practical reality on commercial projects.
So, you could argue that a large, complex Java program can’t be understood just by reading it a line at a time, you have to figure out how it is all wired together via the XML files.
I think what I’m trying to say is that large and complex systems are, well, large and complex whether in Lisp or java. But Lisp has standard libraries just like Java, e.g. CLOS. So it’s true Dave could write his own objects, and Nora her own conditionals, but I wonder whether that is more folklore than practical reality on commercial projects.