When did you first try Lisp (meaning here and throughout the survey "any member of the Lisp family") seriously, and which Lisp family member was it?

I'm still not sure if I'm trying Lisp "seriously", as I have only a little free time and Lisp is my first programming language. It's been about nine months since I first began writing macros and functions for using Clisp as a shell under linux per suggestions I found via the Clisp home page.

What led you to try Lisp?

It's the first language whose source code seemed somewhat intelligible at first glance, rather than looking like typewriter cursing.

If you were trying Lisp out of unhappiness with another language, what was that other language and what did you not like about it, or what were you hoping to find different in Lisp?

I was hoping to find something friendlier to a novice (which Common Lisp does appear to be).

How far have you gotten in your study of Lisp? (I know, that is hard to measure)

I use Clisp as a shell more often than bash now, because I've written some simple utility programs to make it "comfy". Mostly I'm still trying to learn more of the language, because it's so large (tho' this is mastly due to time constraints). I haven't even touched on CLOS yet...

What do you think of Lisp so far?

I think that dynamic memory management and s-expressions are certainly more comfortable than anything else I've seen. I'm not surprised that Java, et al are adopting ideas that have been in the Lisp community for decades. Mostly I'm only disappointed with Lisp's representation in the software world, although that looks to be changing somewhat.

This page is linked from: The Road to Lisp Survey person