I've been programming for a long time, and writing in Lisp (well, mostly Scheme) for a little less. My experience in these languages (and other functional languages) has informed my ability to write clean code even with less powerful tools. Lisp-family languages have lovely facilities for implementing every abstraction in common use:

• S-expressions generalise structure.

• Macros generalise syntax.

• Continuations generalise flow control.

But I'm dissatisfied. Somehow, I want more. Is there a language that's more general? More powerful? As great as Lisp is, I find it hard to believe no one has come up with anything (dare I say) better.

I'm well aware that ordinarily a question like this ought to be closed for its argumentative nature. But there seems to be a broad consensus that Lisp represents the theoretical pinnacle of programming language design. I simply refuse to accept that without some kind of proof. Which I guess amounts to questioning whether the lambda calculus is in fact the ideal abstraction of computation.