Have you looked at "The Joy of Clojure"? I thought the authors did a very good job of showing why exactly they're so excited to be working with the language.
In any case, this is very much a question of discourse. For historical reasons Lisp (at least Common Lisp) seems to have this reputation of being associated with deadly serious people, or alternatively smug lisp weenies, while Ruby people talk about how happy it makes them feel all the time, even though there are plenty of people who clearly have fun with Lisp (even "crufty" "old" CL), and I'm sure many people would regard working with Ruby a chore. I mean, to each his own, I honestly can't imagine there's an objective scale on which CL (much less exciting new languages like Clojure) is "less fun" than Ruby. Things like homoiconicity, on the other, are objective criteria for comparing languages. There are plenty of reasons to like (say) Python better than (say) CL, but to say that homoiconicity or restarts or MOP are no big deal because if you try hard enough you can replicate 95% of that functionality in (say) Perl is a different question entirely.
That was pretty much my point. That maybe the solution to the mystery of the "profound enlightenment experience" around Lisp is that it makes some very happy, but not me.
Have you looked at "The Joy of Clojure"?
I haven't, I'll look into it, thanks. I haven't given up on solving that mystery yet.
In any case, this is very much a question of discourse. For historical reasons Lisp (at least Common Lisp) seems to have this reputation of being associated with deadly serious people, or alternatively smug lisp weenies, while Ruby people talk about how happy it makes them feel all the time, even though there are plenty of people who clearly have fun with Lisp (even "crufty" "old" CL), and I'm sure many people would regard working with Ruby a chore. I mean, to each his own, I honestly can't imagine there's an objective scale on which CL (much less exciting new languages like Clojure) is "less fun" than Ruby. Things like homoiconicity, on the other, are objective criteria for comparing languages. There are plenty of reasons to like (say) Python better than (say) CL, but to say that homoiconicity or restarts or MOP are no big deal because if you try hard enough you can replicate 95% of that functionality in (say) Perl is a different question entirely.