Common Lisp isn't the only option. There are other communities that are geared more towards practical development, with large and growing user and library bases

Common Lisp isn't the only option. There are other communities that are geared more towards practical development, with large and growing user and library bases. Aside from the obvious example of Clojure, I'm thinking specifically of Racket [1] and Chicken Scheme [2]. I use the latter personally, and it's a pleasant experience on any project scale, with the heavy emphasis on extensibility and package management. It also compiles to C. [1]: http://racket-lang.org/ http://racket-lang.org/ [2]: http://www.call-cc.org/ http://www.call-cc.org/