Now seriously: The best three languages I know are Lisp, C and Assembly. There might be other legendary candidates which I have yet to learn -- Forth, Erlang, Smalltalk, or something else. But Lisp will never get off that list.
>>8 Got it right
Lisp, C, platform's asm for me.
I still use other languages as I see fit, or if I have some large pieces of code written in other languages which would be too much work to port, but if I'm to write everything myself, Lisp/C/asm is what I would choose.
>>14
There can be multiple platforms. I know x86 best, and I'm very comfortable writing in it, but the reality is that x86 is a mammoth with a huge number of instructions and many different variants of encoding (even the same) instructions - it's a huge mess if you want to code an assembler or disassembler, but it's widely supported and easy to use. On the other hand, some RISCs are much cleaner to write tools for (they're also easier to implement, if you decide to write your own CPU core; I shudder at the thought of even attempting to implement a modern x86 clone in hardware), but don't offer as much flexibility as x86, however if you're writing a compiler for them, you'll enjoy the arch a lot more.
If you were only going to have just one assembly language, it might make sense to use a higher-level VM one, like LLVM. For »real« assembly languages, MMIX is probably not extensible enough, but ARM or MIPS could be acceptable choices.
I think the need for an assembly language is mostly satisfied when you have C, though.
Kill the CPL branch, kill the FORTRAN branch, save ALGOL, save Simula, save Lisp, save Forth, kill COBOL just to be sure. Scheme and CL come from Lisp.
Smalltalk comes from Simula+Lisp, influences Lisp and CLOS borns, Io and Self come from Smalltalk.
The ML branch comes out of nowhere, immediately suppress Caml, let SML evolve, Miranda, Haskell and Clean will come from that branch.
ABC and Python would never born without C and FORTRAN.
No FORTRAN means no BASIC, and GOTO considered harmful would never happen.
Having killed the CPL branch, Kernighan and Ritchie will never design C, meaning that Objective C, C++, C#, Java, JavaScript and all the C-like languages will never come to life. No C means no UNIX, no C++ means no Windows, no Objective C means no NeXTSTEP and no Mac OS.
Without the ubiquitous presence of UNIX and C, actually functioning Lisp/Forth systems would replace them.
No one would ever think of the existence of something like a ``personal computer'', computing would be a ``smart-people only'' sector, just like physics, the internet would be a simple network to just communicate.
Facebook and social networks would never born, since the whole ``lets ues a komputer fur errything :3'' thing would be shifted several years in the future, when:
1) With the absence of the internet, young generations would (hopefully) become smarter.
2) The entire world population would be more mature.
3) Without having to think of idiots that want to be 1337 h4x0r, security holes of misfunctioning profoundly defective by design systems like Windows and Unix derivatives, spending valuable time on useless things like social networks, PHP, Ruby on Rails and ``how to script ur kewl new websight'', and printers, computer scientist would had more time thinking on real problems, and probably computers would be more advanced (or maybe not, but at least there would be no x86).