If you have been around 10 years ago, including on HN, everybody considered Lisp not only &quot;a functional language&quot;, but &quot;THE functional language&quot;.<p>Heck, Haskell was barely ever mentioned.<p>Not to mention that the whole idea of functional programming was introduced to the programming world with McCarthy and Lisp.<p>(Except if you want to say that &quot;Lisp is not functional, it supports many paradigms&quot; -- but I find that tired. It is, at its core, functional).