Also, as an aside, I wish I could expect more of the HN readership than a cowardly downmod with no response. If you disagree with somebody, say so and take the time to formulate a counter-argument. Save the downmods for things that are offensive or completely off-topic.

Trolling does not entitle you to intelligent responses.

"The future of Lisp, if it has one, is Clojure."

It's not the Clojure part that got you downvoted, as that would have been a valid argument, seeing how sweet clojure is. I think it's the "if it has a future" part. Anyone even remotely aware of programming languages will tell you Lisp has a future, in the same way Algebra does. It's the simplest representation of computable functions, and it has existed, on paper, at least since 1930, and as an implementation since 1958. It's a gateway drug to lambda calculus ,combinatory logic, complexity theory, computable functions and CT, the entire FP field, symbolic logic, formal semantics, compiler construction, and a host of other non-sexy, but essential fields of study.

Less tersely, I will simply quote Tim Sweeney:

LISP: This is the apex of untyped programming with nested scoping and metadata manipulation. It's at the end of the line, not because of lack of potential, but it's so simple and powerful than any improvements to it can be implemented in LISP itself without affecting the core language. In 100 years, after the last C and C++ programmers are long gone, there will still be LISP enthusiasts. But don't expect large-scale software development to happen this way.

So yes, Lisp has a future in that it epitomizes a certain programming paradigm, but as a language with real production significance it has a very hard road ahead, and will need all the advantages that a single-implementation JVM/CLR dialect like Clojure can provide.

You'll notice that hardly any of the companies spawned by Y-Combinator, the ultimate Lisp cult, actually built their systems in Lisp.

You would be mistaken to think YC is a Lisp cult. Calling them that is like calling the American government a bastion of Anglo-Saxon, Anglican, Royalist hegemony. Sure, the two speak English and they share common cultural heritage, but they're either philosophically at odds, or completely unrelated.

You would be stupid to think YC companies amount to anything in the global economic radar. One DoD contract is more profitable than all their revenues combined.

Take a step back, get yourself a phone book and scan it, read international economic reports; none of what we're doing is the apex of human innovation. The AK47-wielding fucktards in the Congo have more global influence than all the startup founders combined. In the grand scheme of things, computer programmers, their bosses, project managers, and employers are the janitors of the world economy. We're call-center operators, glorified with a smidgen of science. And YC "com'nies" have less than $50k standing between them and obscurity; that's less than what the typical restaurant owner spends on kitchen renovations.

Wake up and small the coffee; it's a 99-cent 7/11 re-fill, and I hope you like it.

I've been listening to just this kind of glib, arrogant, self-satisfied rhetoric from Lisp zealots for over a decade now. Your tangential tirade about militants in the Congo is novel but the tenor is familiar. Are you a Naggumite?

The really smart Lispers like Peter Norvig recognized Lisp for the lost cause it is and moved on to build companies like Google. Maybe you've heard of it? People have been solving hard problems for decades without the "magic" of the Lisp primadonnas.

Please, let the recently deceased rest in peace. You don't need to invoke their name in vein to win an argument over the living.

The babel of incompatible CL implementation is going to trip this up right out of the gate.

The future of Lisp, if it has one, is Clojure.