I have found lisps to be one of the more polarizing languages when it comes to opinion. Most people who have experience with one, either love them or hate them.
You are correct that I didn't address the 'I have no experience with a lisp' crowd at all. I was specifically addressing those who have some experience with a lisp.
If you don't like lisp, I suspect that something like Scala would probably be more to your liking. I'd be very interested to hear from people who use clojure and enjoy it after not liking lisp before starting. I suspect they are few and far between, but I'm open to the idea that all of clojure's pluses ( ease of concurrency, ability to tap into java libraries etc ) might win people over.
I think this is a problem with Lisp people. Lisp is a good language, but their users are too emotional about it. They always think in terms or loving or hating it.
I don't like, for example, reading Lisp books where half of the time is spent on selling the language: why it is the best thing since sliced bread and all.
Just let the features talk by themselves. Nobody needs to be indoctrinated into liking a language. Anyway, at the end, emotions are not gonna decide what language is used in a project.
You are correct that I didn't address the 'I have no experience with a lisp' crowd at all. I was specifically addressing those who have some experience with a lisp.
If you don't like lisp, I suspect that something like Scala would probably be more to your liking. I'd be very interested to hear from people who use clojure and enjoy it after not liking lisp before starting. I suspect they are few and far between, but I'm open to the idea that all of clojure's pluses ( ease of concurrency, ability to tap into java libraries etc ) might win people over.