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I did append the (2006) in the link, but not because i think it is obsolete at all. The ideas discussed in the text are still valid.

As other mentioned, maybe Clojure was a big thing that happened to the Lisp world, but still, Clojure is a very small part of the Lisp world.

I did append the (2006) just for the sake of information. I hope no one will decide to not read it based on that.




Clojure is a very small part of the Lisp world.

You have to distinguish between the real Lisp world, in which people work on Lisp programs and systems to solve real problems, and the Lisp hype-world, which is a parallel universe consisting of blog posts, arguments, and pronouncements generated by people who are (mostly) doing no such thing, including the OP. Clojure is now a big part of this parallel universe.


I'm using Clojure to solve real problems.


Great! Clojure is a marvelous contribution; I was careful not to say otherwise. My point is that there are these two parallel universes (real and hype) and the situation is less confusing to an onlooker once he/she figures that out. Clojure itself is real, of course, but its presence on one side of the equation needs to be distinguished from its presence on the other.


I am using Common Lisp to solve real problems (a distributed web app platform.) We should talk :-)


I was just sunday on the European Common Lisp Meeting here in Hamburg. It was really nice, we heard of a bunch of actual applications and heard of new implementation facilities.

The biggest plus: the event was completely free of random whining.


I made the same pleasant discovery at the Lisp conference in MIT this Spring. Face to face, lispers were much more respectful, polite and welcoming than one could have expected from following online lisp forums.


Many nice Lisp people don't bother with the online forums for the same reason that many nice non-Lisp people don't. I should have added "online forums" to my description of the hype-world.

It might be worth mentioning that mailing lists for specific Lisp implementations and libraries tend to have high-quality and largely respectful discussions.




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