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Comment by reaperducer | Hacker News Reader

Thanks for the lists. Aside from ITA and Northwestern University, most of those were new to me. I was kinda hoping for some big commonly-known brands.

I'm trying to convince my boss to let me learn Lisp on company time.

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It would seem as too much of a shot in the dark with questionable ROI for a non-technical (and probably even a technical) manager. From their perspective it would seem as the equivalent of introducing an inexperienced programmer into the team (as your Lisp experience will initially be understandably zero), and there wouldn't be anyone in the immediate vicinity to help with peer review or mentoring. Perhaps it would be more effective to learn Lisp on your own through a few hobby projects, and then gradually (and gently) introduce it as a potential solution for work projects? This does depend on your team's structure, though,

If anyone here has introduced Lisp into their workplace, I too would love to know their approach, be it successful or not. Although I'd be more interested in proper Lisp (OK, and Scheme) than Clojure, the latter wouldn't hurt either.

I think it's worth a try. The company is organized into small teams, and the HR department places a big emphasis on people learning new skills. We have a big catalog of in-house classes that are scheduled and taught every month (or quarter, depending on the complexity) with the purpose of promoting personal and professional growth.

While Lisp is not core to what I do, neither is cooking, yet the company gives us classes in that, too. So I think I have a shot.

Definitely go for it, then, and try to do Common Lisp rather than anything else. You can always expand later to JVM-based Clojure, or indeed contract to Scheme, but it's good to start with the thing itself.

The world always needs more good Lisp programmers.

In order to better solve what business problem, exactly?

If I was your boss, I’d demand to know your projected ROI calculations up-front too. That includes the near-term risks and costs of change management when phasing in your new technologies and practices, and long-term business continuity implications after you’ve personally buggered off to pastures new.

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