The influence of Lisp is widely known among PL researchers and practitioners (such as compiler writers), but there are many people in computing who are unaware

The influence of Lisp is widely known among PL researchers and practitioners (such as compiler writers), but there are many people in computing who are unaware of PL research and who have little exposure to Lisp except for Emacs users and maybe a few exercises in Scheme during college. Thus, the contributions of Lisp are constantly rediscovered by those who just come across it. Over the decades mainstream programming languages have incorporated features from Lisp, and there are still Lisp features that haven’t made its way into mainstream programming languages. Lisp is by no means the final word on programming languages, but its flexibility from its S-expression syntax to macros to its metaobject protocol makes it easier to bend the language to fit the problem rather than the usual approach of making the problem fit the implementation language, and this flexibility remains an enduring trait that continues to attract people.