Touche and haw haw, but you very well know what I've meant.

No, actually, I'm not sure which of two usual misconceptions you have: (a) that Lisp = Common Lisp, or (b) that Lisp is rarely used.

Usually when people think Lisp is dead, they mean (b), but you've been here long enough to have noticed the volume of stories about Clojure on HN, so the probability of (a) and (b) seem about equal.

As for a) I was referring to Lisp as a family of computer languages - not Common Lisp or Scheme per se, so that might have come out unclear. Maybe because my native language is not English.

However as for b) - Of course I have seen a trend on HN about Lisp, so what's better place to look for answers than here? It's a safe haven, and that's it. Even if all people on HN wrote nothing but code in one of the Lisp dialects, would that be statistically significant at all? Try to find questions in general for lisp, scheme, cl and variations on stackoverflow for example.

I know you have wrote a successful software where you raved about Lisp - and it's cool and all, but that was back then. I also see people talking about Clojure in volumes, but I haven't seen any real world usage of significance statistical merit.

However, when watching presentation at google from Dan Weinreb - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquJvmHF3S8 or when looking at presentation from naughty dog (for their new engine): http://www.gameenginebook.com/coursemat.html you really have to think about it and say to yourself: 'Hell, why this isn't used more?'. That is all.

Clojure crossed Common Lisp on Google Trends in october 2008, then remained stable until 1.0. From then, it kept on growing, at a slow but steady pace.

I guess we'll see another boom when the major libraries will have stabilized as well...

http://www.google.com/trends?q=clojure,common+lisp

The trend for Clojure is encouraging, however when comparing it with the trend for Common Lisp, one has to keep in mind that the latter is often called simply Lisp. A slight decline in the trend for Common Lisp may be related to an increase in such usage (if there is one, which I am not sure about).

Not to mention the fact that even non-lisps are getting progressively more lispy over time.

Yes, and this, I think, has so far been the largest contribution of lisp. Not too bad!

And if Clojure becomes a widely used language, so much better. :-) That's still a big "if", of course.

What you mean is that "dead" is a perception that exists only in your mind.

If you look at concerns other than langauge, you could easily say that "writing quality software is dead", since most programmers write low-quality programs that barely work at all. That doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to do a good job, even though quality in the industry is "dead".

Don't base what you do on the actions of an ignorant majority. If you like Lisp, use Lisp. You won't be the only one.

The difference is that the industry desires quality; it just doesn't know how to achieve it. The industry does not desire Lisps (or, for that matter any language that doesn't resemble either C or BASIC.)

Mantras like "YAGNI" and "worse is better" are not indicative of wanting quality.

But my point is; ignore the industry -- it's a failure. Do what you want to do instead -- you can't do worse than the industry as a whole.