When did you first try Lisp (meaning here and throughout the survey "any member of the Lisp family") seriously, and which Lisp family member was it?
Seriously, Fall of 1974 in my first Artificial Intelligence class. Lisp 1.6 (also known, at least to me, as "Stanford Lisp"). I'd looked at the Lisp 1.5 manual the year before, but didn't really comprehend it (not terribly surprising, given that my exposure to that point was punched card Fortran and Basic on a TTY).
What led you to try Lisp?
Um. It was an assignment. Actually, several assignments.
If you were trying Lisp out of unhappiness with another language, what was that other language and what did you not like about it, or what were you hoping to find different in Lisp?
n/a
How far have you gotten in your study of Lisp? (I know, that is hard to measure)
Hmm. Changing schools shifted from Lisp 1.6 to UCI Lisp, then I got a job where the available tool was Interlisp. When PCs arrived, I started with IQ Lisp, with diversions through muLisp and UOLisp (a variant of Standard Lisp). Back at work (and a new job), I convinced my employer to spring for Golden Common Lisp and also snarfed a copy of Nil to run on the Vax. This was about Common Lisp standardization time, and I frankly made only the barest accomodation to the Maclisp-dominant aspects of CL -- I had my Interlisp compatibility libraries for a very long time.
Having shifted to the PC exclusively (and being an Interlisp bigot), it's only in the last couple of years that I've started digging more deeply into the richness of CL -- but the little research tool that I sell commercially has always been in Lisp, and I have no plans to change that. Face it, I'm a Lisp person, even if a minimally literate one.
[About your Lisp tool sold commercially: can you add an entry to http://alu.cliki.net/Industry%20Application? -- Paolo Amoroso]
[Done. -- Bob Bechtel]
What do you think of Lisp so far?
I find it amusing to see all the "new ideas" in other languages that my Old Lisp Fart-dom allows me to chortle at. Lisp does the job for what I need.