On the other hand the one lisp guy produced cool working programs you are not able to understand, while the ruby and python guys solved trivial problems with 100 fragile dependencies, need 10x more time and people to support it.
The first is the better strategy.
> On the other hand the one lisp guy produced cool working programs you are not able to understand,
It's this precise attitude that turns me off Lisp. First, it's not actually that hard to understand. Sure, it's harder than most other languages, but if you've done programming in half a dozen languages (some functional, etc.) Lisp holds no real mysteries.
More importantly, being hard to understand is a bad thing. A large part of what makes a good programmer is the ability to write clear, robust, easy to understand code. Yet Lisp advocates seem to love to talk up how hard the language is to learn and how subtle and mysterious it is. I'm sure that appeals to teenage boys, but it is objectively a bad thing! Like, literally - hard to understand code has all sorts of obvious disadvantages, and no compensating advantages over easy to understand code. It's a bad thing!
I've never heard any Lisp advocate talk about it being hard to learn or use (let alone in some bragging terms). The most memorable advocacy quote for me is "cuts through hard problems like a hot knife through butter".
When the language is easy to work, you delve into harder problems.
What cool working programs (emacs aside) would these be? For such an old and constantly promoted language the list of working programs is incredibly sparse.
lisp programs are used in the industry mostly. everything which is bit more complicated, and is happy with a one-man dev team. extremely cool apps.
open source I only know gmane and sawfish.
emacs and autolisp certainly not, these are atrocious dialects.
