There is nothing really 'dead' about Lisp, whether you're speaking about Common Lisp or all Lisps. But it is true that most programmers would not turn to it when considering new projects.
I essentially see two problems with the state of Lisps. First off, the one with major library support, Common Lisp, is often times lacking in good library support. You'll find 10 libraries to do anything, but 5 of them will be undocumented, 3 of them will be dead projects, and 2 of them are incomplete.
The second problem is community. Again, I speak of Common Lisp, because it's the most fully-featured Lisp out there right now. Where is the community of Common Lisp? Who do I go to ask for feature requests in the 'next version'? Do I get some form of support? (I mean, c'mon, just compare it to Python!)
I think that Clojure has solved the second problem, more or less, with it's BDFL. However, I don't think it has the breadth of features that CL has, and being on the JVM brings some of its own problems.
Clojure is getting there, but I think that if a group of, say, 10 people decided to 'popularize' Common Lisp, they could. Just create a distribution of Lisp (say, using sbcl or anything else cross-platform) and ship it with a few helper libraries - since Lisp has macros and reader macros, it can essentially be transformed into the clean language it sometimes isn't.
When I google for a bug/question in Python, I invariably find remarks about the same Python I am using (CPython, the effective standard and single implementation that works on all platforms equally well which all users have rallied around).
When I google about the same for whichever of the multitude of Common Lisp implementations exist out there, I have to filter down to which one as well as which platform.
That is a tremendous difference, especially for newcomers.
As for "actual" support, given the focus on a single implementation (which I understand and like that it is not possible with CL), when you need to hire some random consultant service, you don't have to do the same thing when filtering prospective people.
I essentially see two problems with the state of Lisps. First off, the one with major library support, Common Lisp, is often times lacking in good library support. You'll find 10 libraries to do anything, but 5 of them will be undocumented, 3 of them will be dead projects, and 2 of them are incomplete.
The second problem is community. Again, I speak of Common Lisp, because it's the most fully-featured Lisp out there right now. Where is the community of Common Lisp? Who do I go to ask for feature requests in the 'next version'? Do I get some form of support? (I mean, c'mon, just compare it to Python!)
I think that Clojure has solved the second problem, more or less, with it's BDFL. However, I don't think it has the breadth of features that CL has, and being on the JVM brings some of its own problems.
Clojure is getting there, but I think that if a group of, say, 10 people decided to 'popularize' Common Lisp, they could. Just create a distribution of Lisp (say, using sbcl or anything else cross-platform) and ship it with a few helper libraries - since Lisp has macros and reader macros, it can essentially be transformed into the clean language it sometimes isn't.