"the beauty of the language is that we only need six special forms" - this is an oversimplification.)
There are not mere "only six special forms" involved in what makes a Lisp "a miracle". There is, in my opinion, a small, well-balanced set of ideas/principles which are complementing each other. Notably "everything is a symbol (pointer)" semantics, common for code and data cons-based underlying representation, so "the code is data" maxim makes sense, the uniform general evaluation rule for prefix-notation expressions, the "list-aware" reader function, to name the few.
All these ideas or principles aren't CL specific, on the contrary, these are common for all Lisps. CL is just a good example of incorporating mini/specialized DSLs (loops, format, etc).
I have tried to describe "how the miracle works" but failed miserably.) These are my counter-arguments.
There are not mere "only six special forms" involved in what makes a Lisp "a miracle". There is, in my opinion, a small, well-balanced set of ideas/principles which are complementing each other. Notably "everything is a symbol (pointer)" semantics, common for code and data cons-based underlying representation, so "the code is data" maxim makes sense, the uniform general evaluation rule for prefix-notation expressions, the "list-aware" reader function, to name the few.
All these ideas or principles aren't CL specific, on the contrary, these are common for all Lisps. CL is just a good example of incorporating mini/specialized DSLs (loops, format, etc).
I have tried to describe "how the miracle works" but failed miserably.) These are my counter-arguments.
http://karma-engineering.com/lab/blog/Good-ideas
http://karma-engineering.com/lab/wiki/ProperUnderstanding
http://karma-engineering.com/lab/wiki/Bootstrapping1
http://karma-engineering.com/lab/wiki/Bootstrapping2