Let me try to get this straight: Lisp is a language for describing algorithms. This was JohnMcCarthy's original purpose, anyway: to build something more convenient than a Turing machine. Lisp is not about file, socket or GUI programming - Lisp is about expressive power. (For example, you can design multiple object systems for Lisp, in Lisp. Or implement the now-fashionable AOP. Or do arbitrary transformations on parsed source code.) If you don't value expressive power, Lisp ain't for you. I, personally, would prefer Lisp to not become mainstream: this would necessarily involve a dumbing down. -- VladimirSlepnev

We fail to realize that mastery is not about perfection. It's about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives. -- George Leonard, Mastery.

Some may say Ruby is a bad rip-off of Lisp or Smalltalk, and I admit that. But it is nicer to ordinary people. -- Matz, LL2

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. -- Thomas Jefferson

There are two ways of constructing a software design; one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. -- C. A. R. Hoare

Resume writing is just like dating, or applying for a bank loan, in that nobody wants you if you're desperate. -- Steve Yegge.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage. –Anais Nin

I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have. ~Thomas Jefferson

There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. –Roger Staubach

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above it. ~Washington Irving