I forgot to say that I'm reading your text now :) I had a compiler class with Marc Feeley, author of Gambit-C, and I've been sold on Lisps ever since. I really love the simplicity of Scheme, but I found that it's much easier to get going (i.e. not having to re-write even basic things such as for-loops) in CL than Scheme. I can write/read some basic macros but my end goal is being able to write a read-macro for a DSL. I can't really envision doing this as easily without a Lisp.