Common Lisp isn’t a very pretty language and isn’t the pinnacle of academic language design, but it’s rock solid, is ANSI standardized, is very highly performing, has great IDE support, has multiple companies offering commercial support, and has many open source implementations. The ugliness, in my opinion, comes from the odd character of the language, and not its fundamental design. It’s not perfect, but it’s surprisingly orthogonal. There is the odd pitfall, and some semantics that aren't standard (but are de facto standard), and in the end you get a combination of a lot of great features, paradigms, and functionalities that are difficult to find elsewhere.
(The macro system is plain, but surprisingly effective!)
Without even getting into the benefits of Lisp for language & compiler development, these are wonderful aspects for a company.
(The macro system is plain, but surprisingly effective!)
Without even getting into the benefits of Lisp for language & compiler development, these are wonderful aspects for a company.