I found this article quite interesting:
Programming Language Comparison: Lisp vs C++
The author of the article, Brandon Corfman, writes about a study that compares solutions in Java, C++ and Lisp to a programming problem, and then writes his own solution in C++. The benchmark solution is Peter Norvig's 45 lines of Lisp (written in 2 hours).
Corfman finds that it is difficult to reduce his solution to less than 142 lines of C++/STL. His analysis of why, is an interesting read.
