When did you first try Lisp seriously, and which Lisp family member was it?

Just a few days ago, on the 12th of April, 2006, I started using Common Lisp seriously. I'm writing a program for the Bundeswettbewerb Informatik (which in English would probably be called the German Federal Contest of Computer Science), second round.

What led you to try Lisp?

I was led to try Scheme by Abelson's and Sussman's freely downloadable MIT CS introduction lecture videos. Scheme immediately struck me as the most elegant programming language I had seen to date, after which I tried writing a few toy programs in it. After realizing the power of Common Lisp's macros, I switched over to Common Lisp.

I should mention that I had been exposed to Emacs Lisp before I learned about Scheme. It never really appealed to me, though. Of course, I'm now rediscovering Emacs Lisp and seeing it from a new perspective.

What other languages have you been using most?

I started programming on an Atari ST using Omikron Basic, but the language that I probably used for the longest timeframe was Turbo Pascal on MS-DOS (later I used Free Pascal). That's long ago now, though. Recently, I've been using Python most, sometimes writing some little things in Ruby and Smalltalk, while keeping an eye open for interesting new languages such as Nemerle and Slate.

How far have you gotten in your study of Lisp?

I think I've grokked most of the basic concepts now, like closures, macros and CLOS multimethods. I'm now trying to get my feet wet with CLIM. That's pretty much, I guess, considering my really rather short exposure to the language. Lisp seems unexpectedly easy to learn!

I'm a bit concerned about the fact that I'm already beginning to find my own Python code ugly. I'm now always trying to write procedures in a very Lispy, functional manner, which doesn't suit Python well.

I suspect I might have fallen in love...

Lisp isn't a language. It's a dangerously addictive drug! Its use should be regulated.

I do sometimes think that Common Lisp could really use first-class continuations, hygienic macros and a vastly revamped standard library (built upon CLOS and with non-anachronistic procedure names), though.

By the way, what makes me stick with Common Lisp rather than Scheme is: (1) CLOS, (2) the larger and livelier community (i.e. more free libraries) and (3) special variables. I can't imagine why someone would try to take special variables out of Lisp!