As a Professor of Chemistry - I'm all about higher learning and I love curves (non-linear functions that is). I don't agree that Common Lisp has a higher learn

As a Professor of Chemistry - I'm all about higher learning and I love curves (non-linear functions that is). I don't agree that Common Lisp has a higher learning curve than other languages. To become operational - Common Lisp is no more difficult to learn than other languages. Bind variables, conditionals, loops and a little arithmetic and you can start doing some damage. You can write procedural code, functional code, object oriented code - whatever your problem needs. It's that Common Lisp has a LOT more "up" than other languages. It keeps going up and up as you learn about macros and CLOS and multiple dispatch and restarts and upwards. It's really neat discovering all the things that you realize you were missing from other languages - some things that they add over time with ever more complex and arbitrary syntax. When you get tired of writing "for" loops and agonizing how to manage memory for the next fancy data structure you want to implement - dive into it - it's great. Common Lisp will still be there.