The one thing that Lisp programmers can agree on is how much better Lisp is than C and similar languages. I was talking last week to some programmers who use the Clojure version of Lisp and it made me wonder “If Lisp is so great, why did this guy have to build a slightly different version instead of building a popular application program in an existing version of Lisp, such as Common Lisp?”

What do readers think? We accept the proposition that C is feeble and yet there are only three major variants of C: C, C++, and Objective-C. Over the same period of time there have been at least the following: MacLisp, Interlisp, Lisp Machine Lisp, Common Lisp, Scheme, Emacs Lisp, AutoLisp, Clojure (perhaps readers can think of others). Yet Lisp has fewer programmers and completed programs. Thus the ratio of popular installed computer programs to versions of the language is vastly higher in C than in Lisp.

Who loves Clojure and why? And why hasn’t the C world turned into a similar Tower of Babel?