Lisp is a huge success, not because people have built "commercially significant applications" in it, but because it has expanded how generations of programmers

Lisp is a huge success, not because people have built "commercially significant applications" in it, but because it has expanded how generations of programmers think about programming. I'm not defending Lisp specifically (in fact I don't like it very much.) It's that the notion that a language can be "better" or "flawed" in an unqualified or objective way really irks me. The viewpoint that the only reason anyone would ever program anything is to create production software is, in my frank opinion, an intellectually stunted one.