>
> The intersection of practical and interesting may be quite small.

....and therefore more difficult to find. And so one asks questions....

> But if you are really looking for something that helps you think in a 
> different direction, yet isn't merely academic or weird-for-weirdness 
> sake, try a functional language such as Haskell.

Is this recommendation from experience? I am really looking for informed
opinions, particularly as enjoyment of a language tends not to be vicarious.

> Or consider OCaml; some folks here were discussing ways of writing binary 
> Ruby extensions in OCaml as opposed to C which seemed quite interesting.

Yes, but why OCaml? Is it enjoyable? Learning curve...etc.., do you actually
have experience of it?

> Lisp, Haskell, and Ocaml are floating in the back of my own mind as 
> candidates for next language to learn.  Lisp has the upper hand so far, 
> because, well, it's *Lisp*.

That does seem like a rather self-referential reason. I would probably not
choose Lisp on this particular recommendation.

>And there are lots of good, free resources for it.

Also for many other languages.

>>>the most part) from that wiki page, so maybe that makes them more 
>>>popular. Now get to Googlin'.
>>
>>
>>  ? I can't believe my eyes.
>>
>> Can someone tell me if I am talking to a troll?
>
> Well, they do exist and occasionally appear on this list.  I suggest that, 
> before you think someone a troll, try to be generous and just assume the 
> poster is not a native speaker of English, and may have only skimmed your 
> original post, and really means well but doesn't always come off well in 
> plain text.

My response, IMO, was quite constrained.

Greg