You can learn an idea in any language that supports it. If it is easier to learn this kind of technique in Lisp, it is because Lisp has a high density of "expert experts". However Perlmonks is not doing too badly on that measure either.
As for the similarity between the two solutions, they are similar and different. They are conceptually similar in that you institute the idea of code that writes your functions for you. But the ways that they allow you to dynamically generate code are completely unrelated mechanisms, and the difference has implications for memory usage, run-time performance, and flexibility. (The Lisp solution will, all else being equal, use more memory, have better run-time performance (as long as cache-misses are irrelevant), and is more flexible in what you can easily accomplish. Of course all else is not equal...)
