Well, you need to learn both if you're going to make a career of working in Lisp. But even if that isn't in the cards (and it isn't for most of us, for all sor

Well, you need to learn both if you're going to make a career of working in Lisp. But even if that isn't in the cards (and it isn't for most of us, for all sorts of reasons), there's still a whole lot of value in learning the language enough to go through and make a few things from scratch. I tend to agree with ESR on the subject: "LISP is worth learning for a different reason — the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it. That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot." (http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html)