Given that the current Oracle lawsuit is seriously denting Jave's image, and given that one of the early intention for Java was to drag C++ developers half way to Lisp, do you think now would be a good time to consider Lisp on earnest?
BTW, how does the lawsuit affect Clojure?
Swap Oracle for Sun, Google for Microsoft, Dalvik for the Microsoft Java Virtual Machine, 2010 for 1997 and I don't see the difference: one big-ass company with a lot of money going after another big-ass company with a lot of money. After a bunch of feisty lawyering, one will pay the other and they'll swap pieces of paper allowing them to go on as before: getting you to write software for their technology stack so they can brag about adoption, penetration, and the unparalleled quality of freely-available libraries for their platform; lather, rinse, repeat.<p>Regardless, Clojure will remain the best way to survive the twilight of the Java era.
There is more to programming language choice than syntax, semantics and pragmatics. Like, economics.<p>Lisp is not a replacement for Java, and never will be. In the same way that a sports car is not a replacement for the municipal bus system.
There are an awful lot of assumptions there... the largest being that this is going to have a large impact on Java. I remember years ago lots of hyperbole about how Microsoft's J++ and Sun's suit was going to spell the end of Java and here we are now...<p>Other points:<p>When I've looked at C++, Java and Lisp- I have never been able to see anything that would make me take that 'halfway to lisp' comment seriously.<p>Clojure is just a language that runs on the jvm. There is nothing about the current lawsuit that should have any technical or legal impact on Clojure.