> We know mainstream programming is a pop culture, but we shouldn't encourage it by recommending one language over another based a FAD. To further underscore t

> We know mainstream programming is a pop culture, but we shouldn't encourage it by recommending one language over another based a FAD. To further underscore this point, Common Lisp was created in 1984 incorporating elements of proven late 1970s Lisps like MACLISP; CL has been successfully used on spaceships and important complex systems, and the CL ecosystem continues to evolve and grow till today. The specification has been unchanged since the '80s and probably won't change any sooner, since the language is extensible and thus can evolve as the state of the art evolves. CL is largely free from any kind of fad; everything that is built into the language is there either because (a) it has been proven to be necessary and proven to work correctly in the best way possible, or (b) was needed for backwards compatibility with earlier lisps. Clojure is a new language and tries to be nice to newcomers, but it's difficult to compete against technology that has at least 33 years of continuous evolution. Also, if you need to interoperate Java classes with CL, there's ABCL which will do it nicely. As a lisper said, "those who don't know Common Lisp are doomed to reinvent it."