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The biggest barrier in my opinion is what most people think is "weird" syntax or the more precisely the absence of it. People are just not used to it. Add to the that the lack of popular libraries for some modern niceties and it really adds to it being unpopular.

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I don't understand the syntax complaint: it is simple to learn, and with few exceptions, applies in all cases.

Other language syntax (C or Erlang, e.g.) is arbitrary and tedious by comparison.

It's not "syntax," it's human parseability. Lisp is hard to parse because humans don't think in lists. Some people are smart enough or naturally able to overcome that obstacle, but most aren't.

What this fails to take into account is that most programmers learn a language with C like syntax first. Either C, C++, or Java (you could even argue JavaScript). Like it or not, people have a tendency to avoid change when possible.

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