I am a huge common lisp fan and I recommend it to anyone interested in better ways of doing software. Start with Practical Common Lisp: http://www.gigamonkeys.c

I am a huge common lisp fan and I recommend it to anyone interested in better ways of doing software. Start with Practical Common Lisp: http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ http://www.gigamonkeys.com/book/ http://www.cliki.net/ http://www.cliki.net/ has a lot of useful resources for people who are just starting. If you prefer a functional language(Common Lisp is multi-paradigm, and isn't particularly better at FP than say python) clojure and scheme are good options. I recently started reading Realm of Racket, which seems like a pretty good introduction to Racket(a scheme like language). I recommend learning all 3 dialects, all of them deserve deep study and I strongly favor Common Lisp as the most mature and versatile one.