In short, no. ESR had it right. "That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot

In short, no. ESR had it right. "That experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use LISP itself a lot." My primary bread-and-butter language is Javascript. When done "right", Javascript is a very expressive functional/prototypal object oriented language with a lot of very interesting features. If you can do it in lisp, you can do it in Javascript: http://foohack.com/tests/ycomb.html http://foohack.com/tests/ycomb.html I've seen in myself and in coworkers, the best Javascripters know at least a little lisp, and as their lisp skills increase, so do their javascript skills. I suspect it would have the same effect on Ruby or SML or Erlang programmers. Their attitude towards boilerplate code tends to change as well, and they begin seek solutions that are as concise and expressive as possible. Lisp is unique because it effectively has no syntax. You write the abstract syntax tree directly. By removing the scaffolding, Lisp exposes the programmer to the fundamental nature of any programming language in a way that no other programming language does. That's why C and Lisp are the best languages to learn, as early as possible: if you know these two pretty well, you're in a good position to master any language you might come across. Misc is a promising cousin of Lisp: http://will.thimbleby.net/misc/ http://will.thimbleby.net/misc/ I've played with it a little, but not enough to really have a strong opinion of it.