Actually, Paul, your advice needs a caveat. I'm a huge fan of Clojure, have attended a conj, and forked it into a literate program. Hickey's insights are brill

Actually, Paul, your advice needs a caveat. I'm a huge fan of Clojure, have attended a conj, and forked it into a literate program. Hickey's insights are brilliant. But I wouldn't use Clojure to write code my company considers vital. We all know that most of the cost of a program is maintenance, estimated at 80% or so. Clojure code I wrote a few years ago no longer compiles. I didn't change the code, the Clojure language changed. My literate program no longer compiles either. So it is likely that the next time you upgrade your system your company's vital program fails. Common Lisp is a standard. Code I wrote in the last century runs unchanged. It will run unchanged in the next decade. If I'm writing code I care about, meaning that my company needs it to work for more than a few years, I strongly suggest using Common Lisp. "Common Lisp: It Just Works".