Cantheman wrote:Are you a better programmer?
Yes... though that isn't saying much.
Like jstoddard, I found that Lisp reawakened my interest in programming.
Lisp, I'm told, was originally created as way of writing math in a way that can be understood by a computer. I think there's something profound in this idea: math models the universe, and Lisp expresses math... Of course, that's true of most programming languages to some extent, but the observation seems apt with regards to Lisp, more so than languages whose design is slanted toward "powerful syntax" or what-have-you.
Lisp has, if nothing else, provided a handful of exciting or mind-boggling moments where I realize that certain things are possible.
I can write a realtime game— with an event loop that doesn't return control to the REPL until termination— and use a REPL with it anyway, through Swank.
I can write a program whose output is a Lisp form, and whose input is that Lisp form. Everyone has heard that Lisp is an "AI language" or that it's somehow well-suited to AI; the ability to (hypothetically, at least— haven't tried this yet!) use forms as primitives in genetic programming could be one reason for that perception.
These are things I'd have assumed to be impossible and/or insane when I was just writing C. Now I just expect things to be generally magical.
Then there's Emacs. Aside from efficiency in editing, I know that if I need to do certain tasks, like operating over a series of links, I can either do it like a stooge in Firefox, manually clicking everything, or I can set up a keyboard macro in emacs-w3m. If the macro doesn't cut it, Elisp will. Being able to speak Lisp to Emacs is a huge asset, IMO.
"If you want to improve, be content to be thought foolish and stupid." -Epictetus