For a very good reason: let me invite you to contemplate Python performance on 1960-class hardware.
LISP was definitely a thing in the 1960s, and python is not that different. For a long time, the former was pretty much 'the one' very-high-level, application-oriented language. Much like Python or Ruby today.
... and python is not that different.
8-0 Allow me to disagree.
pretty much 'the one' ... application-oriented language
Allow me to disagree again. LISP was lambda calculus made flesh and was very popular in academia. Outside of the ivory towers, the suits used COBOL, and the numbers people used Fortran (followed by a whole lot of Algol-family languages) to write their applications.
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