It is dubious whether Linus would be more productive using LISP. I mean, git is based around the idea of being super close to the metal, with a consistant focus on speed. We are talking about people who say (and can reasonably claim !) that java is too slow because it does not support unsigned integers...
"being a genius programmer", whatever that means, is not a one dimension thing, and people can excel at some things while sucking at others: programming is very vast.
I don't know much about LISP, and have not data to believe (or not believe) the OP claim, but he is not alone in claiming that. For example, P. Norvig has also described how he was surprised that people could be as productive in C++ as in LISP when he arrived at google (I think it was in coders at work ? He made a slightly differente claim concerning the unimportance of language on HN as well (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803815).
"being a genius programmer", whatever that means, is not a one dimension thing, and people can excel at some things while sucking at others: programming is very vast.
I don't know much about LISP, and have not data to believe (or not believe) the OP claim, but he is not alone in claiming that. For example, P. Norvig has also described how he was surprised that people could be as productive in C++ as in LISP when he arrived at google (I think it was in coders at work ? He made a slightly differente claim concerning the unimportance of language on HN as well (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1803815).