There's a big difference between "practical" and being the foundation of software (and I guess people ARE still trying to make that happen; it's not a strawman).
Emacs Lisp is probably a better example of practical.
Or LispWorks or Franz Allegro (esp AllegroCache) that have made real money for years by letting people code circles around others with better tooling. Scripting languages have closed the gap a lot but not fully. I'd say at least two commercial tools are quite practical.