If Lisp Is So Great (2003)
I think it would be valuable for other commenters to share why they did or did not choose Lisp for their most recent project(s).<p>I chose Go for a recent project, and TypeScript for another. Both languages make getting started very easy: they have straightforward installation, good tooling, and a lot of support for when things go wrong.<p>I did not seriously consider LISP, and I think the main reason is that it&#x27;s a very confusing landscape. Google &quot;how to install LISP&quot; and you get a page like <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikibooks.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Common_Lisp&#x2F;First_steps&#x2F;Installation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikibooks.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Common_Lisp&#x2F;First_steps&#x2F;Instal...</a> with half a dozen options. It&#x27;s hard to choose and most of these do not look promising. For example, Steel Bank Common Lisp is one I have heard of, but their binaries are out of date and they use SourceForge (shiver). Arc is another, but their installation instructions do not inspire confidence with disclaimers like &quot;don&#x27;t use the latest version.&quot; My concern is I will spend two weeks diving in before hitting some hard limitation, and I&#x27;ll be stuck.<p>(Clojure is surely the best known modern LISP, but I do not want to depend on the JVM.)<p>Speaking as an outsider, I think LISP would gain a lot more traction if its community coalesced around a single implementation. (Sorry if that&#x27;s a clichéd argument). This would allow for investment in areas like documentation, platform support, tooling, etc. The functional language community went through this and the result was Haskell, which is excellent in all of those areas.