I wouldn't say it's wasted time - it helps you learn how to manipulate data structures, the difference between pointers and addresses, basic data structure algorithms, basic OO principles, etc.
All good points, except that basic OO principles. In my experience people talking about OO programming couldn't care less about the data structures used. Which is one of the many faults with their approach.
In an ideal world everyone learning programming would start with some lessons about how processors work, an idea about some assembly language and its operations, and a brief overview of how modern time-sharing operating systems work. at the very least a person should come out of that introduction knowing what's an heap and a stack and how processes are scheduled in modern operating systems. Then data structures in some low-level language like C, and only after all that the talk about complexity and performance, programming paradigms and specific languages. And it wouldn't be bad to throw in also some ideas about how compilers work.
Unfortunately this would take years all together at the usual pace of education. And so it happens that most programmers just pick a language and use it without caring for the lower-level layers. It's not that bad, instructions about how to effectively use the vast available APIs and libraries of the most popular languages are pretty good nowadays. But knowing how the low-level stuff works still makes a difference when dealing with performance-bound problems.
I'd recommend Haskell over Lisp, if you want to learn a functional programming language. Learning one isn't really required, but it's a lot of fun!
I could use a lot of adjectives about lisp, but I'm afraid the moderators wouldn't like them!
Fun isn't one.
But I did met a few people who liked lisp. I think that with this, as with so many other things one learns, liking or disliking it depends on how you start learning it. Starting with a good teacher or a good book makes all the difference. If you start it badly you may end up committing it to the "garbage" pile in your head and refusing to touch it again.
So, a more general advice: it's better to wait until you have the right resources to learn a programming language than to try to start with bad documentation or bad teachers.
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