A few choice quotes from this interview

Yes, that was the big revelation to me when I was in graduate schoolâ€”when I finally understood that the half page of code on the bottom of page 13 of the Lisp 1.5 manual was Lisp in itself. These were â€œMaxwellâ€™s Equations of Software!â€

I fear â€” as far as I can tell â€” that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training.

Even if youâ€™re designing for professional programmers, in the end your programming language is basically a user-interface design. You will get much better results regardless of what youâ€™re trying to do if you think of it as a user-interface design.