To be fair some of these are subjective. People of course should never sell their opinions as objective or facts. Which btw, I don't think the person you responded to did.
Okay, let's try to go through each of them more or less objectively, shall we?
- "Lisp is archaic and outdated"
While Lisp was introduced in the late 1950s, it has evolved considerably. Modern dialects like Common Lisp and Clojure offer extensive libraries and features that compete with contemporary languages. New Lisp dialects are constantly being added to the family. Clojure-Dart and Jank are more recent examples.
- "Lisp is hard to read"
Lisp’s syntax, based on simple and consistent S-expressions, can be highly readable once you familiarize yourself with it. The concise and uniform structure allows for straightforward parsing and manipulation of code. Try taking any JSON and convert it to EDN, or any HTML/JSX to Hiccup, and visually compare it - the latter would look far more readable. One doesn't even need to know any Clojure at all, to see that this is true.
- "Lisp doesn't have a powerful type system"
While Lisp is generally dynamically typed, Common Lisp supports powerful optional type declarations and checks. Dialects like Typed Racket offer strong, static typing. There's a new extension for CL called Coalton, and Clojure has Spec and Malli. You can do mind-blowingly awesome things with them, e.g., building a data structure for a ledger where each transaction is ensured to be in the correct order and shape — something that would require significantly higher effort to build in any other programming language.
- "Lisp code is not easy to refactor"
The homoiconic nature of Lisp, where code and data share the same structure, makes it particularly amenable to metaprogramming and automated refactoring. Tools like SLIME for CL and Cursive for Clojure can do an amazingly good job helping you refactor.
- "Nobody uses Lisp in production"
While not as mainstream as some other languages, Lisp is actively used in various domains. Companies like Grammarly use Common Lisp, and Clojure is widely adopted in the industry, particularly for data processing and back-end services. Apple built their payment system, Walmart their billing, and Cisco their entire cybersecurity platform. There are tons of examples like that.
There are many seemingly great ideas in our industry that initially received hype but later faced significant criticism — goto statements, the waterfall model, object-oriented databases, CORBA, SOAP, XML everywhere, and so on. Lisp, though, despite all the skepticism, keeps coming back again and again, and just refuses to die.
So, I stand by my words: Lisp (as an idea) is really awesome. Every programmer should gain at least some basic understanding of what it offers, because there's no harm in it — only benefits. Again, I'm not fighting anyone disliking any concrete tool, but hating the idea? Why? The only explanation I have for that - shallow understanding of what that idea is about.
You invented all those quotes and then argued against them. I said none of them. It's probably not your intent but it feels like you are coming after me angrily with these long text responses.
I'm not coming "after you." I'm sorry if you feel attacked, and I apologize if you think I'm angry. We're in a public forum, and I'm simply expressing my opinions (for everyone to see and read). They are not specifically aimed at you or in response to what you've said. This particular comment wasn't even a response to your comment; it just happened to be in the same thread.
Okay, let's try to go through each of them more or less objectively, shall we?
- "Lisp is archaic and outdated"
While Lisp was introduced in the late 1950s, it has evolved considerably. Modern dialects like Common Lisp and Clojure offer extensive libraries and features that compete with contemporary languages. New Lisp dialects are constantly being added to the family. Clojure-Dart and Jank are more recent examples.
- "Lisp is hard to read"
Lisp’s syntax, based on simple and consistent S-expressions, can be highly readable once you familiarize yourself with it. The concise and uniform structure allows for straightforward parsing and manipulation of code. Try taking any JSON and convert it to EDN, or any HTML/JSX to Hiccup, and visually compare it - the latter would look far more readable. One doesn't even need to know any Clojure at all, to see that this is true.
- "Lisp doesn't have a powerful type system"
While Lisp is generally dynamically typed, Common Lisp supports powerful optional type declarations and checks. Dialects like Typed Racket offer strong, static typing. There's a new extension for CL called Coalton, and Clojure has Spec and Malli. You can do mind-blowingly awesome things with them, e.g., building a data structure for a ledger where each transaction is ensured to be in the correct order and shape — something that would require significantly higher effort to build in any other programming language.
- "Lisp code is not easy to refactor"
The homoiconic nature of Lisp, where code and data share the same structure, makes it particularly amenable to metaprogramming and automated refactoring. Tools like SLIME for CL and Cursive for Clojure can do an amazingly good job helping you refactor.
- "Nobody uses Lisp in production"
While not as mainstream as some other languages, Lisp is actively used in various domains. Companies like Grammarly use Common Lisp, and Clojure is widely adopted in the industry, particularly for data processing and back-end services. Apple built their payment system, Walmart their billing, and Cisco their entire cybersecurity platform. There are tons of examples like that.
There are many seemingly great ideas in our industry that initially received hype but later faced significant criticism — goto statements, the waterfall model, object-oriented databases, CORBA, SOAP, XML everywhere, and so on. Lisp, though, despite all the skepticism, keeps coming back again and again, and just refuses to die.
So, I stand by my words: Lisp (as an idea) is really awesome. Every programmer should gain at least some basic understanding of what it offers, because there's no harm in it — only benefits. Again, I'm not fighting anyone disliking any concrete tool, but hating the idea? Why? The only explanation I have for that - shallow understanding of what that idea is about.