That would be like saying most people prefer VHS to Beta.

Systems don't always/often win because they're the best or most liked.

As with political views, most people prefer the ones they first learned. Only later in life, perhaps after becoming dissatisfied with what they know, they may risk trying something very different.

My CS education was the typical Pascal/C/C++, so it wasn't decades later until I actually learned a Lispy language. But I had read enough to know that a lot of very intelligent people had loved Lisp; surely there was something to that.

Likewise, the people who grew up on Lisp probably only grudgingly moved _down_ the ladder to use some of the more popular languages ;).

to me lisp is its own problem, its value is that it gives you too much it becomes anti social. Society likes ignorance and delegation, lisps gives you the ability to have everything into one atom and mold it as you need it. But that's only useful for 1) people with that kind of mindset 2) hard problems that fall off mainstream/commercial support

Like Autolisp? Autocad (and its clones) of software used by zillions of designer, architects, ... extened by zillions of Lisp programs.

And SISCOG (http://www.siscog.eu) who built a Europe-wide transport infrastructure project in Common Lisp which was used by London Transport amongst other clients?

Is autolisp code lispy ? The few that I remember felt like qbasic in parens.

Yeah, but it's not like Lisp is a surprise to many IT people. It's old, it has a rather enthusiastic grass root following that promotes it and various universities have at least a few courses using it.