Learning Lisp is easy. Learning Haskell is hard. But unlearning either is next to impossible. So anyone writing a new functional language would be best advised to not have that problem.

Now, one might feel differently if Lisp, or Haskell, or any other functional language, was such a conspicuous market success. Under the circumstances, however, I don't think one can be faulted for the suspicion that perhaps functional programming is too important to be left to the functional programmers.

I think we'll have to disagree about whether or not Lisp is a typed language. I realize that people with IQs of 175 have an uncanny knack for taking indefensible positions and then defending them, but I'll just have to take this one on trust.

While we're measuring our respective equipment, however, we can agree that Lisp has macros. Hoon does not have macros, because it's a pure typed language and a pure typed language doesn't need macros.

If Hoon did have macros, however, they would be inherently hygienic, without anything like a gensym. If this is a good time for you to favor us with a lecture on the virtues of Lisp, perhaps you could start with gensyms and their place in "Maxwell's equations of software."