Practicality of languages?

/prog/, I have been searching your archives, and I come to you presenting a new question: Is LISP actually as impractical as it's been said it is? I want to learn a language that I can use as a career, and I want to learn it first. Would learning CL be a mistake if say, I were to learn Ruby later on and make a living making Ruby-based software?

ITT we discuss the real, unbiased usability of languages based on a few criteria (but they should be organized separately, these qualities shouldn't affect each other.)
Fun
Usability
Career
Efficiency of code
Etc.

So far from what I've seen it goes like this:
Company-practicality:
1. C
2. C++
3. Ruby
4. Perl
5. Java
6. LISP
7. PHP
~
100. VB

Fun:
1. LISP
2. Ruby
3. Perl
5. Python
4. C
5. C++
6. Java
~
99. PHP
100. VB

Usability:
1/2. LISP
1/2. C
3. C++
4. Ruby
5. Perl
6. Python
7. Java
~
100. VB

I know there are some left out on this list, but mostly because these are the ones /prog/ talks about the most.

Discuss, and feel free to call me an uneducated retard, even though I do realize that the languages listed here aren't the same style programming.

There isn't some magical practicality scale. Lisps are excellent for rapid prototyping. So are some other languages. If this means they are practical, then they are practical, sure. Personally, I consider rapid development and ease of change to be worth far more than anything else.

You will not hurt yourself by learning a lisp first. I'd say either a lisp or lua would make the best first languages. Then take an OO language like java or python, then come back to lisp/lua and see how they would treat OO. Then do whatever the fuck you want because baby shit like coddling compilers is simple.

300 points for visual basic? amazing

>>3
This is crab-soccer of programming languages.

>>4

>crab-soccer
I read this post three times. Laughed every time.

>>5
What? Back in my elementary school, the object of crab soccer was to keep your points at zero? Have I been deceived all these years?

Java is probably highest on the practicality scale, now that it has finally overthrown the old king, COBOL.

OP we know you aren't going to learn to program anyway, at best you will write a "hello world" then get bored.  This post is dumb, the most practical languages for getting a job would be the ones most used in industry, and there are handy statistics for that.  Fun and usability are both personal preference.  For instance I find Java fun and usable, and Lisp not fun and not usable, but there are many here who have been reading to much Paul Graham and think the opposite is true.

>>2
Practicality from a business perspective is almost always ease of maintainability, and hiring Lisp programmers is by no means easy since most of them are douchebags.

>>8
Java fun and usable
Lisp not fun and not usable
Paul Graham
Lisp programmers are douchebags
Tell me this isn't what they really teach in Java University.

>>6

I was laughing with you, not array you

>>9
My comment was directed at people who like Lisp for qualities beyond its trolling potential.

>>9
Clearly the tripfag never properly learned his Lisp, there's no reason to argue with him.

>>1
Fun - Lisp is very fun to code in it, if you know it.
Usability - Excellent, but some libraries are not very well documented. People say the library situation is poor, but looking at common-lisp.net and cliki, you'll see libs to do just about everything (I know I found some for doing some obscure tasks I needed), but some have poor documentation, this isn't a huge obstacle as it's easy to inspect packages and live data/code.
Career - It's not popular in the industry, but then, the industry isn't that fun of a place to be, most of the jobs are the same old thing, however Lisp has its niches for some jobs, and there's some companies (not many) hiring Lisp programmers. If you plan on writing the project in a small team of experienced Lispers, it would be a good choice. I wouldn't say you should learn Lisp expecting to get a job using it easily.
Efficiency of code - Some of the compilers generate very good code, so they can be as fast as C, but that is actually only half the truth. The other half is that most Lisp programmers want to build robust and extensible programs, which would be much harder to build in C, in which case, they will have to pay a price in speed for this(2 times as slow?). The bottom line is that if you really need to squeeze performance out of it, you can do it, as long as you use one of the good compilers, but on average, without micro-optimizations, your programs would behave slower than those written in C.

reading to much Paul Graham
Sure, I've read some of his articles, but I took them with a grain of salt. What I did observe when I tried to write my own programs in Lisp, after learning it, was that it was much easier and more natural to write it than in most languages, and the code just practically wrote itself as long, and evolved as my ideas of the problem I wanted to solve was getting clear. Programs that would have taken me 4-5 hours in C, would take 10 minutes in CL, and at the same time, they would be much more robust and easily extensible(for example, in one program, all I had to make a function switch to a different concrete implemenation of an algorithm was just adding a new keyword argument which specified the new function to be used(which would be a normal function or a lambda expression)). I could go on, but it's pointless to argue with someone who doesn't understand Lisp. You see the benefits quite easily without needing Graham to shove them in your face(he is good at introducing new people to Lisp, but people can usually find the benefits themselves after they know Lisp well enough - about a month of study reading most of the popular Lisp literature while working with a current implementation in a good Lisp supporting editor should be enough).

Oh, and forgot to mention somethign else >>9
Practicality from a business perspective is almost always ease of maintainability, and hiring Lisp programmers is by no means easy since most of them are douchebags.

You got your reasons wrong. A lot of Lisp programmers are smug, but they are rightfully so. This isn't really the reason why they don't use Lisp. It's believed Lisp is excellent for teams of small, but smart/experienced programmers solving a hard problem. The issue here is that those progammers are not easily replaceable. A company wants to replace programmers like parts in a machine, this is possible with Java and some other stricter languages as they limit what a programmer can do, while Lisp does not, it gives you a lot of freedom (of course, a company could have some very strict Lisp coding guidelines, but I'm not sure how well that would work). However, even Java programs written by large teams have hard to replace people, those are the project architects that design their class layouts and understand how everything fits together. Surely replacing their program's architect isn't as easy.

>>1-13
Where's the HASKAL?

>>19
It's a thread about practical languages. Academic curiosities need not apply. kthxbai.

practical languages
C
Lua
lisps

How can these coeds be stripping if they're already naked? Inquiring minds want to know.

>>22
They are peeling off their skin

>>22
they are nude nudes
skin all over their bodies