Learning Lisp - Why?

I learned Common Lisp to see what all the fuss was about, and I don't regret it. I think most claims in its favor are hyperbole, but the Lisp implementations are very nice pieces of technology, providing features comparable to CPython with approximately the performance of Java. I almost always find myself missing some feature of the Common Lisp environment when working on more lucrative endeavors.

"Learning Lisp is for the programmer what meditation is for the Buddhist monk ..."<p><a href="http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4724/learning-lisp-why/27656#27656" rel="nofollow">http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4724/learning-lisp-why/27...</a>

Stack Overflow is down for maintenance, so here's a cached version:<p><a href="http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QfU7Ls3W0SIJ:stackoverflow.com/questions/4724/learning-lisp-why+http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4724/learning-lisp-why&#38;cd=1&#38;hl=en&#38;ct=clnk&#38;gl=us&#38;source=www.google.com" rel="nofollow">http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QfU7Ls3...</a>

"Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot."<p>- Eric S. Raymond, "How to Become a Hacker"<p><a href="http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html</a>

Has there been ANY programs written in lisp that has risen to the status of anything more than novelty?<p>IBM's watson, the best thing we got going for artificial intelligence, is it written in lisp? NO, it's written in java. The link from lisp to artificial intelligence is a lie. Lisp is just a very poor language, it's designed to get eager novices working on things that are irrelevant so they will learn (the hard way) that being a good programmer means laughing at the people who promote lisp as "an epic language". Lisp had its day, somewhere back in the 1950's/1960's. That day is gone.<p>If I'm working on any sort of problem needing a programming solution, and someone suggests we use lisp, I buy that person a copy of "The pragmatic Programmer", and tell them to read it closely.