Yes, if Lisp is so powerful, where are all the super programs written in it? I'm only aware of EMACs and maybe at one point Autocad? And I guess PG wrote a couple webapps with it....
It's naive to think that just because you're a programmer you know everything there is to know about the software industry. You don't. You know about a small fraction of the mainstream development tools, and even those, at a superficial level. For example, can you name the top software products for running local elections? how about automating a chemistry research lab? packages for oil exploration? vacation property management? real-time spoken Chinese processing? computational archeology? artist talent management? threat modeling for distributed corporate networks?
See? :-)
"Social" programmers, the guys you see in chat rooms and "community" websites are all mostly generalists, and typically work in well defined roles as grunt programmers. Nothing fancy, website here, a database there, a GUI or two, click, generate, zip, distribute, and call it a day type work. Don't let this closed echo-system define your perception of "the software industry".
Should I start reading EMACS source? Show me the code! If there's not at least one great open source project written in lisp, I'm not inclined to take your claims prima facie.
I wouldn't extrapolate beyond that. I don't know what languages are good for writing super-programs since I never wrote one. Super-programs are a small subset of all programs.
There're a lot more.
http://www.cyc.com/cyc/technology/whatiscyc
A large knowledge-based system with several hundred thousand concepts (classes) and millions of assertions (facts and rules).
Under development since 1984.