First of all, it's Lisp. Lower case.
Why the fuck would you want to code malware in it?
Lisp is
the high-level language. It's homoiconic. This means it treats code and data as identical, allowing for flexibility unlike any other language. Its syntax is very simple and based on a simple pattern known as S-expressions, the same S-expressions it uses to build its abstract syntax tree during interpretation.
Every single language feature you can name: Lisp has it. That's because Lisp pioneered it. Lisp was the first language to have garbage collection, conditional expressions, dynamic typing, recursion and many other things we now take for granted.
The homoiconicity of Lisp makes it a
programmable programming language. You can manipulate and alter language constructs with ease to create what are known as macros (see example here:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/267862/what-makes-lisp-macros-so-special), and even create your own little domain-specific languages to use in projects.
Lisp is powerful like no single other language. Yet, unlike C++, it manages to retain so much elegance and beauty. C++ is a horrific, ugly and arcane behemoth. Lisp is the light, the way, the hope.
A programmer who does not know Lisp is doomed to ignorance and stagnation. That's the harsh reality. Keep writing your Python scripts.
Now, Lisp has many dialects. The two most popular are Common Lisp and Scheme. Common Lisp basically tries to unify a lot of Lisp dialects, and as such has a huge library and larger learning curve. Scheme is small, elegant and originated in academics. I recommend you start with Scheme first. Use an interpreter like Chicken Scheme which has lots of third-party libraries written for it.
Lisp (particularly Scheme) has also been the forefront language in one some of the greatest computer science books of all time, such as
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Languages (if you haven't read this book yet, DO IT NOW YOU MORON. This is one of the single greatest books you will read in your life, it will instill you with such a profound sense of enlightenment in so many areas of theoretical CS and practical programming. You will never be the same foolish code monkey again. It's a heavily renowned classic for a reason. STOP READING MY POST AND PICK IT UP.)
Then there's also
The Little Schemer, a concise tutorial on Scheme that immerses you deep into the language immediately and it also has a good sense of humor.
What practical uses does Lisp have? Everything. You may have heard of Clojure? It's a Lisp dialect built on top of the JVM that is currently all the rage with web developers. You could learn that, too, if you'd like. Especially if you're already familiar with the Java API.
Lisp can be used to program anything at all. In fact, there were even special purpose computers developed by the MIT back in the '70s and '80s which had their hardware designed to run software (from the operating system to the application level) written in Lisp. They were called Lisp Machines and emulators exist for them. These machines pioneered laser printing, window managers, mice and bitmapped graphics. Look them up.
OS written in Lisp:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genera_%28operating_system%29Lisp is widely considered by great computer scientists and programmers to be the single greatest programming language ever conceived by man. This is not an exaggeration. See
http://lispers.org/.
tl;dr Learn Lisp, you idiot.
