I, Heow Eide-Goodman?, do solemnly offer these my responses to The Road to Lisp Survey: When did you first try Lisp seriously, and which Lisp family member was it?
It was 2001. The Internet boom was over, I had some extra time and was considering my career path options. Living in NYC, paying the rent is a decidely non-trivial operation and my thought process went as such...

• So the job market sucks, what else do I like doing?
• Nothing, I love writing software. But is is the act of writing software, or having written software?
• Both, it is a personal joy and also a utilitarian tool.
• What language-features make me a productive developer?
  • Not having arbitrary walls, no hobbling me in any way.
  • I'm and adult and professional, I don't need my hand held when writing software as I know when I'm doing unsafe things but it's sometimes required.
  • Complete openness.
  • Dynamic everything.
  • A thriving community.
  • OO (and this was before I figured out CLOS- OO on steroids)
  • Functional languages are always close to my heart.
  • Flat semantics.
• What languages do I know and how productive am I in them?
  • C++ experience: 10 years, productivity ratio: 1.0
  • Java experience: 5 years, productivity ratio: 2.0
  • Python exprience: 2.5 years, productivity ratio: 4.0
  • Ruby experience: 1.25 years, productivity ratio: 8.0
• why? Because literally everything that I love, and everything that makes me productive all point with a blazing neon sign to Lisp

What led you to try Lisp?
This mortal coil makes you realize that life to too short to be spent in the company of morons. Especially when you spend 8 hours every day utilizing tools and technologies that were designed to make you less productive. What other languages have you been using most?
C++ and Java, but also just about all of them. My road to Lisp actually took about 4 years before hitting me in the face like a brick, I even tried Clean '95. How far have you gotten in your study of Lisp?
Lisp takes an afternoon to learn and a lifetime to understand. I still consider myself a newbie as I feel that even though I am productive in Lisp, there is still a world to be explored. What do you think of Lisp so far? Awesome. Not only does Lisp twiddle the innards of my head in a plesant way but the community is simply outstanding. Got a question? ...there's a paper. Got a stupid question? there's a paper. Got a personal question? There's a guy whos been Lisping since 1970. Got an ill-informed opnion of Lisp? Theres me, a guy who's spent too much time doing everything else.

---

Please delete all but one of these cross-referencing tags: Switch Date 1990s