Java: halfway to Lisp

``And you're right: we were not out to win over the Lisp programmers; we were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp. Aren't you happy?'' - Guy Steele

What did he mean by this?

Imagine the stereotypical Java code monkey hard at work cranking out hundreds of LOC per hour for a massive software project. Now imagine Java doesn't exist, and instead, the code monkey is cranking out C++. Now imagine being forced to use/work with/integrate with said software.