Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Common Lisp provides the ability to declare types of variables, and do type-checking on it. This allows you to make

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Common Lisp provides the ability to declare types of variables, and do type-checking on it. This allows you to make CL type-safe if you want to. It also allows a major speed up. The real problem I see with Lisp is that it lacks a vibrant community like Ruby and Python has, and is in some cases quite ugly. (Why, why use names like 'progn'? Why not the shorter, clearer 'do'? etc.) Clojure addresses that, but I get the feeling that Clojure is just an addon to Java and that you must use the Java lib in order to use Clojure; the integration between them seems to be to be a bit ugly, if easy to use. However, due to the size of the JVM base, Clojure is very good for production code - but strikes me as lacking the hack-hack quality you can get with CL. And only has one implementation. Aurgh! If only they didn't standardize CL. (Except, then it wouldn't exist at all right now, I bet.)