This thing that each Lisp developer writes its own DSL library is one of the reasons why the enterprise isn't so found of Lisp.
It is always a steep curve to dive into other developers code.
It is always a steep curve to dive into other developers code.
Having worked with both approaches, there's a time and place for both. Being able to quickly dive into a codebase is not always a good thing. One thing conservative enterprise developers should like about DSLs is that they require new developers to structure their code in a way that fits the intended domain model. I've seen my fair share of code written by developers who "quickly dove in" and they almost never fit the model and end up causing a huge mess which may be unrecoverable. Conversely, if you don't trust your developers to write decent code, trusting them inside a dynamically-typed DSL is probably not a good idea either.
I had a very good CS degree in the mid-90's.
We got to use Pascal, C, C++, Prolog, Caml Light, Smalltalk, Oberon(-2), Component Pascal, Lisp, SQL, PL/SQL, x86 ASM, MIPS ASM, Java, across the 5 years it used to take (nowadays thanks to Bologna is no longer the case).
It doesn't mean we got to use many of those languages afterwards.
But Lisp is a special case, if Lisp Workstations hadn't failed in the market or if Sun and others hadn't picked UNIX as their Workstation OS, maybe it would be different IT world, in spite of all DSLs I was referring to.