> At the time it was more or less taken for granted that AI work was done in Lisp. C++ barely existed. Perl was brand new. Java was years away. Spacecraft were mostly programmed in assembler, or, if you were really being radical, Ada.

Given the choices, Lisp made a lot of sense when they started. After 2001-2004, there were other options - not to say they were necessarily better, but a mainstream language that enables a large number of people working together (interchangeably) has its value. Lisp is indeed "one-of-a-kind, highly dynamic applications that must be developed on extremely tight budgets and schedules" - but has a reputation for fostering lone geniuses and bad for large teams working together and maintaining legacy codebases.

(I write this as a big fan of Lisp.)