[rossj]

Perhaps "Learning how to write a lisp-like language" is a requirement? Or perhaps it's low memory usage and fast start-up time for short-running tasks. Does it matter what he chooses for his own project?

I kinda like Clojure, but I don't think it would occur to me to default to it every time someone mentions the word 'lisp'. Not because it's not an adequate language, but there are downsides to using it for some jobs.