Why should I learn Lisp? [closed]

Question

I really feel that I should learn Lisp and there are plenty of good resources out there to help me do it.

I'm not put off by the complicated syntax, but where in "traditional commercial programming" would I find places it would make sense to use it instead of a procedural language.

Is there a commercial killer-app out there that's been written in Lisp ?

Answer 1

Lisp is very useful for creating little DSLs. I've got a copy of Lisp in a Box running at work and I've written little DSLs to interrogate SQL server databases and generate data layers etc in C#. All my boiler plate code is now written in lisp macros that output to C#. I generate HTML, XML, all sorts of things with it. While I wish I could use Lisp for everyday coding, Lisp can bring practical benefits.

Answer 2

Learning LISP/Scheme may not give you any increased application space, but it will help you get a better sense of functional programming, its rules, and its exceptions.

It's worth the time investment just to learn the difference in the beauty of six nested pure functions, and the nightmare of six nested functions with side effects.

Answer 3

You could use Clojure today to write tests and scripts on top of the Java VM. While there are other Lisp languages implemented on the JVM, I think Clojure does the best job of integrating with Java.

There are times when the Java language itself gets in the way of writing tests for Java code (including "traditional commercial programming"). (I don't mean that as an indictment of Java -- other languages suffer from the same problem -- but it's a fact. Since the topic, not Java, I won't elaborate. Please feel free to start a new topic if someone wants to discuss it.) Clojure eliminates many of those hindrances.

Answer 4

Not saying this is a killer app but it looks like it could be cool http://code.google.com/p/plop/

Answer 5

I programmed in Lisp professionally for about a year, and it is definitely worth learning. You will have unparalleled opportunity to remove redundancy from your code, by being able to replace all boilerplate code with functions where possible, and macros where not. You will also be able to access unparalleled flexibility at runtime, translating freely between code and data. Thus, situations where user actions can trigger the need to build complex structures dynamically is where Lisp truly shines. Popular airline flight schedulers are written in Lisp, and there is also a lot of CAD/CAM in Lisp.

Answer 6

If you like programming you should learn Lisp for the pure joy of it. XKCD perfectly expresses the intellectual enlightenment that ensues. Learning Lisp is for the programmer what meditation is for the Buddhist monk (and I meant this without any blasphemous connotation).