newbie LISP question

[De Clarke]

I have been investigating Common Music with Franz ACL on
my Linux crate, using Touretsky as my primer for LISP.
I'm about halfway through Touretsky and I have a general
question for all you experienced LISP hackers:

	what are the features of LISP that distinguish it
	from other languages and make it better for this 
	kind of work?

So far, I haven't met a feature of LISP that isn't in (or 
can't be trivially done using) Extended Tcl; and some features 
seem less developed than their counterparts in Tcl.  Obviously 
I have a bias, after 5 years hacking Tcl; and obviously I'm 
studying LISP at the dopey beginner level, where the real 
strengths of the language are not revealed.  So I'm sure this 
discouraging impression is untrue! 

Unfortunately Touretsky is strictly tutorial, not really
comparative...

Therefore, I thought I would ask you folks, who have so
much more experience with LISP, what it is that endears
LISP to you.  Every language advocate has their favourite
"bet you can't do *this* in [that other language]" example.
Would anyone be kind enough to send me a few such examples
where "only LISP will do the trick," so as to inspire me
to stick with my self-imposed lessons?  at the moment I
am wondering why I'm doing this to myself :-)

How would you compare, say, LISP vs Perl vs Tcl vs Java?
I will certainly take this question to the Usenet if you
all feel it's inappropriate here -- but I'm particularly
interested in musicological applications.

de

.............................................................................
:De Clarke, Software Engineer                     UCO/Lick Observatory, UCSC:
:Mail: de@ucolick.org | "There is no problem in computer science that cannot: 
:Web: www.ucolick.org |  be solved by another level of indirection"  --J.O. :