Is Lisp all that?

Hey. I was looking around the internet and I came across this website (http://lispers.org/) of people praising this language called 'lisp' like it was the best thing since slicled bread. I hadent really heard of it up until then, but after I did some research it seemes everywhere I looked loads of people were saying how amazing it is and how its better than C/C++, Java, FORTRAN etc. Others were saying how it was a 'hackers language' and the how Lisp code is really hard to read. So my question is does anybody on this forum have a good knowladge of Lisp and if so, is it really as good as people say it is? I was just thinking that even if it is the most powerful high-level language ever, then why doesnt everyone use it? Most of the best programming libaries and APIs such as OpenGL give examples only in C/C++ (as far as I have seen). If Lisp is so amazing, then why arnt they all in Lisp?

P.S I am referring to 'Common Lisp'
Slava Akhmechet does a very good job of it.

www.defmacro.org/ramblings/lisp.html
Why don't you simply jump into it and see for yourself? Grab a Common Lisp installation, and start reading this tutorial:
http://cs.gmu.edu/~sean/lisp/LispTutorial.html
APIs such as OpenGL give examples only in C/C++ (as far as I have seen). If Lisp is so amazing, then why arnt they all in Lisp?


Because there Lisp isn't the right tool for those jobs. Lisp stands for LISt Processing, it was designed by the guy who coined the term Artificial intelligence and was designed for A.I.

It has many applications outside that, and the best is academically. For a long time MIT used Scheme (a dialect of LISP) in its introductory course because of how well it could be used to teach new students programming structure. A lot of more advanced programmers claim that LISP gave them a better understanding of data structures than anything else ever could.
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Okay, well I started reading http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ and so I will finish that and see where it takes me. Btw, have either of you learned Lisp?
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I have. I've been using Clojure (a lisp dialect based on the JVM) for an chatbot project of mine.
Because there Lisp isn't the right tool for those jobs. Lisp stands for LISt Processing, it was designed by the guy who coined the term Artificial intelligence and was designed for A.I.
Okay, so would you say that LISP (specificly Common LISP) isnt really a genereal purpose language like C++ is?
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Yea. I'd definitely say that. But that may very well be my opinion and not fact.

And again, it does have purpose outside A.I.
Okay, well my main area of interest in programming is 3D graphics, specificly game programming, but I am interested in all areas of programming really, not just graphics. So if I wanted to write OpenGL graphics engines or games using existing engines (I would have to write some sort of lisp port) would learning LISP be worth it?
I'd say learning a dialect of lisp is worth it for any programmer. specifically scheme.

I'm not saying you'll use it in production, but having learned it will more than likely help you.
Is Lisp all that?
No, but scheme is. :O)

Obligatory links:
http://xkcd.com/224/
http://racket-lang.org/

/me runs away
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