Since everyone has access to decent c toolchain these days you tend to see this over and over again. The "wisdom tradition" of UNIX? There is some kind of need for this kind of counter factual "the ancients had powers we can't believe" thing... the thing is that languages and frameworks surface sets of techniques for solving problems that if not present end up needing to be reinvented... this goes for C and UNIX, mainframes, os400, erlang...whatever. Maybe I'm just being contrary, but it seems to me that the lessons I learn in one language apply to all the others at least in some facet.

I worked my way through SICP last year and it really changed the way that I think about code...while also not making me a lisp nut. It seemed to me that lisp could have been anything else and the techniques would still be there.