There seems to be some psychological barrier that prevents people from learning Lisp (or Scheme for that matter).
i think that the problem is that of nesting parenthesis; Multiple nestings of parenthesis assume that the information hidden in the inner levels of parenthesis nesting is somehow different/or hidden from the outer levels.
I think that a complicated system must combine multiple level of 'truths'; a fact that is definitely true on a lower level might end up as being of less significance on a higher level (or vice versa - the process of debugging turns designs on to its heads; some philosophers (see Hegel) call that 'dialectics').
Now people who are used to censorship have no problem with that ! A person who is supposed to hide his stuff - he is a person who must be afraid of external censorship; this person is used to social hierarchy; he knows that the lower level (his personal self) knows things that are different from what is regarded as public truth.
Now assume that society opened up (somehow) since the fifties; people who grow up during later timers are less accustomed to multiple levels of truths; therefore this hierarchy of parenthesis will be regarded as oppressive/disconcerting to subsequent generations.
North Koreans might be good Lisp programmers; however they might have other, more pressing problems - like staying alive under this monstrous regime.
There are other societies that had censorship, maybe to a lesser extent than North Korea; I guess that once upon a time people in the US did rely on the Tube for information (that was before the net) the tube is a centralized source of information, its editors were subject to some control; so I guess that censorship was quite real during that period.
i think that the problem is that of nesting parenthesis; Multiple nestings of parenthesis assume that the information hidden in the inner levels of parenthesis nesting is somehow different/or hidden from the outer levels.
I think that a complicated system must combine multiple level of 'truths'; a fact that is definitely true on a lower level might end up as being of less significance on a higher level (or vice versa - the process of debugging turns designs on to its heads; some philosophers (see Hegel) call that 'dialectics').
Now people who are used to censorship have no problem with that ! A person who is supposed to hide his stuff - he is a person who must be afraid of external censorship; this person is used to social hierarchy; he knows that the lower level (his personal self) knows things that are different from what is regarded as public truth.
Now assume that society opened up (somehow) since the fifties; people who grow up during later timers are less accustomed to multiple levels of truths; therefore this hierarchy of parenthesis will be regarded as oppressive/disconcerting to subsequent generations.