;; This is real syntax!
    (loop for k being the hash-keys
          using (hash-value v) of hash-table
          ...)

Still lisp. Although the blog author has a point - clojure is probably cleaner lisp than common lisp.

I think the issue is heavily due to syntax though. Naturally the (())()()()(), but I think even aside from the (), the syntax does not seem super-efficient to me. Perhaps I have spent too much time with ruby and python, but it feels as if lisp is a legacy regression, purely syntax-wise.