Why should I learn Lisp? [closed]

Answer 1

I can't answer from first-hand experience but you should read what Paul Graham wrote on Lisp. As for the "killer-app" part, read Beating the averages.

Answer 2

From http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/introduction-why-lisp.html

One of the most commonly repeated myths about Lisp is that it's "dead." While it's true that Common Lisp isn't as widely used as, say, Visual Basic or Java, it seems strange to describe a language that continues to be used for new development and that continues to attract new users as "dead." Some recent Lisp success stories include Paul Graham's Viaweb, which became Yahoo Store when Yahoo bought his company; ITA Software's airfare pricing and shopping system, QPX, used by the online ticket seller Orbitz and others; Naughty Dog's game for the PlayStation 2, Jak and Daxter, which is largely written in a domain-specific Lisp dialect Naughty Dog invented called GOAL, whose compiler is itself written in Common Lisp; and the Roomba, the autonomous robotic vacuum cleaner, whose software is written in L, a downwardly compatible subset of Common Lisp. Perhaps even more telling is the growth of the Common-Lisp.net Web site, which hosts open-source Common Lisp projects, and the number of local Lisp user groups that have sprung up in the past couple of years.

Answer 3

Killer app? The flight search engine by ITA Software is one.

As for "why", it will most probably make you a better developer and is extremnely unlikely to make you a worse one. It may, however, make you prefer lisp dialects to other languages.

Answer 4

"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."

--Eric S. Raymond, "How to Become a Hacker"

http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html

Answer 5

Lisp can be used anywhere you use traditional programming. It's not that different, it's just more powerful. Writing a web app? you can do it on Lisp, writing a desktop application? you can do it on Lisp, whatever, you can probably do it on Lisp, or Python, or any other generic programming (there are a few languages that are suited for only one task).

The biggest obstacle will probably be acceptance of your boss, your peers or your customers. That's something you will have to work with them. Choosing a pragmatic solution like Clojure that can leverage the current install base of Java infrastructure, from the JVM to the libraries, might help you. Also, if you have a Java program, you may do a plug-in architecture and write Clojure plug-ins for it and end up writing half your code in Clojure.

Answer 6

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